Ghosts That We Knew
by Just-Another-Mindless-Writer
Summary: Emma's parents were hunters, but after their deaths she finds herself raised in the foster system with no memory of who they were and nothing but the name of the man who rescued her as an infant to indicate who she is. Now grown up, Emma will do anything to find who her parents were and what happened to them, even if that means becoming a hunter herself and finding the Winchesters.
1. Chapter 1

September 7th 1984

It was supposed to have been a simple case, just go to the town, find who was haunting the freeway and then salt and burn the remains. It was nothing David and Mary-Margret hadn't done a thousand times. They were so sure, in fact, that the job would be easy that they brought their barely year old daughter, Emma, along with them, intending to drop her off with the towns best nanny claiming they needed and evening out while they dealt with their little problem.

The road itself was in Maine, just out of a town called Storybrooke, the same one where the woman in question, Regina, who haunted the highway after her untimely death in 1969 had been from. She'd been married to a man named Leopold with whom she had a young daughter, Snow. The two were happy, Leopold was mayor of the quaint little town and Regina worked brilliantly as his first lady and as the mother of their beloved child. That was, of course, until Daniel came to town, a mysterious man with a beautiful face and the charm to match. The mayor's wife had been smitten at first sight before the two even became involved.

The story went the same as most others did. The wife, so tired of the small town life she'd been doomed to since her birth, decided to run away with the handsome stranger and live a happier life where she could raise her daughter the way she wanted, and not the way her foolish husband demanded. It would have all gone perfectly had the mayor not found out of his wife's infidelity and her plan to leave him. He'd threatened her, something incredibly out of character for the usually loving and benevolent mayor. He'd told Regina that should she try and leave him or ty to take his daughter away that she would reap the consequences. His words, however, did nothing but spur the already determined woman to follow her heart, and not her head.

The night of September 9th, Regina snuck from the house, a single bag of clothes for Snow over her shoulder and a few necessities she wouldn't be able to pick up in the next town over before retrieving her daughter from the nursery and sneaking out into the night. She made it past the town line, at least, planning to meet her lover at a diner not far out of the town.

Her plan had been thwarted by the headlights illuminated behind her, the sleek and well cared for car she recognised as her husband's crawling against the side of the road behind her. He'd rolled the window down, demanding that she get in and come home, that they could be a real family with Snow, that they could raise her right. Regina had refused, telling him she was meant for more than a small time life. She wanted it all, to be free and in love, something she couldn't have with Leopold. In a fury, he'd revved the engine of the car, nothing more than an idle threat. Regina had laughed. She was a vindictive woman when she wanted to be, her time encased in the town of Storybrooke driving the sweet woman to bitterness. And so, she'd laughed at her husband's threats, turning on her heel and stalking away. Then the threats become full, the car even scraping the back of Regina's legs harsh enough to mark.

She'd run then, clutching her no longer slumbering daughter in her arms as she ran beside the road, tears tracking lines on her face as she panted through the burning of her lungs. The first collision hadn't killed her, but the impact of her body against the tarmac, baby Snow caught in the middle, had killed the infant. Everything faded to black then as Regina looked upon the bloody face of her child, red staining the front of her white nightgown as she balled into the darkness. That was when Leopold, stricken by the grief of the horror he had committed tried to run away. A scuffle had ensued, Regina refusing to let her husband get away with such an atrocity. The first hit of his fist hadn't killed her, neither had the second, but by the time her head had hit the tarmac once more, blood pooling around her like a morbid halo, she'd been dead.

Leopold lasted another year after the tragedy, claiming his wife had run away with another man, only for her to be found dead in a ditch the following morning. No one questioned their mayor in his grief and no one suspected him of the crime, the kind man that he was, he had no reason to lie. He'd been driving to the scene where it had happened the following year, ready to place flowers as red as blood by the ditch where Regina had been found as though he could put his mind to rest.

He had been her first victim, his body found the next morning with his face blooded up, the back of his skull crushed in and his legs broken as though hit from behind by a car. His vehicle was found near the carnage, it's bonnet crushed beyond repair from where it had impacted with the town's welcoming sign and a single word written across the windscreen in deep red liquid. _Snow._

This continued every year. There were always two victims, one for the mother killed by her jealous father and one for the child she had lost that night.

The deaths, though close together, never happened on the same day, yet Mary-Margret and David had never spent the time to figure out the pattern. They had figured that she would haunt the road the night she had died as most other spirits tended to, and they hadn't been wrong. What they hadn't considered, however, was how the spirit would mourn for the loss of its child, the wailing sounds of a woman's grief sounding through the forest. And so, on the anniversary of her daughter's birth, the spirit of Regina Mills would take another victim in penance.

David and Mary-Margret should have realised the pattern sooner, and not when the tyres of their truck screeched to a halt before the woman in white, her dress seeping blood like a saturated bandage on a bone deep wound. It had been a massacre. David had been torn from the car first, his body slumping before Mary-Margret could even reach for her shotgun already loaded with rock salt. She'd gone next, franticly scrambling for the gun to protect their child, to protect baby Emma from the spirit intend to kill them all. Then it was all over. The truck was crashed and the bodies dumped in the ditch, ready for whatever poor soul was to stumble upon them, their windscreen graffitied with blood.

* * *

John Winchester, who'd been staying at the motel behind the diner outside of the small town intent on meeting David and Mary-Margret in the small town the following day heard the police radio buzz to life.

"Dean," He said, looking to his eldest son, nearly six years of age and already wearing his plaid pyjamas as he laid beside the sleeping toddler on the bed. "Get Sam, we've got to go," He said. John should have known better, truly he should have, but hearing of the bodies found in the ditch and the totalled truck surely only meant one thing, and he'd be damned if he left his children alone at this time, especially with the accusatory glances of the stern woman behind the desk. The last thing he needed was for the woman to grow suspicious of the shifty man in room 6 with the young boys he'd already left alone with some food for the entire day.

His guns were ready and waiting in the trunk of the Impala when he threw in the duffel bags containing his and the boys clothes. Dean had settled a still sleeping Sam into his car seat before clambering in the other side, watching his brother with the watchful eyes of a boy much older than Dean was.

"You wait here, Dean," John said, zipping up his jacket as he slipped his FBI badge into the interior pocket. "You lock the doors and you don't let anyone know you're here. I'll be back." And then John was gone, making his way over the commotion of police cars and an ambulance.

Dean was quite content to stay where he was, unbuckling his seatbelt and scooting closer to his slumbering brother. He'd always been taught to look after Sammy, ever since he'd been passed the sleeping infant over a year ago as his nursery burned. It was something he was sure he did well, enough that his father would entrust little Sammy to Dean, despite his young years, even if only for a couple of hours. That was all well and good until Dean heard the crying.

It was faint but Dean heard it, his ears tuned to the sound of infants in distress. There were nights where Sammy would cry and Dean would be the one to wake, John either too exhausted or too busy drowning out the world to notice the cries of his son. It was no wonder that Dean, despite the chatter of adults, the buzzing of radios and the still prominent sounds of sirens in the distance, heard the wails of a child.

Without much thought to his father's orders, Dean made sure Sammy was buckled in tight, turned off all the lights inside of the Impala and then unlocked the doors. It didn't take him long between getting out of the old black car and finding the source of the sound. It was a wonder, Dean thought, that no one else had heard it. On the opposite side of the road, hidden slightly by a shallow ditch full of leaves and moss, lay a squirming bundle Dean soon recognised to be a wailing child. She, Dean guessed by the yellow blanket embroidered with purple writing, didn't seem much younger than Sammy was, but her lungs were no less powerful and she screamed to her hearts content.

Without much thought, Dean clambered into the ditch, shushing the infant during his decent. He took no notice of the blood stained blanket as he reached towards her, instead lifting the clearly terrified infant into his arms and rocking her the way that soothed Sammy. This baby, it appeared, was not like Sammy. Figuring he'd left his brother long enough, Dean climbed back out of the shallow ditch before shuffling through the shadows back towards the impala, unseen.

Well, apart from his father, who had turned just in time to notice the movement in the darkness. After excusing himself, John made his way back to his car, already dreading whatever it was that was lurking in the shadows. He felt his heart shudder at the sight before him. Dean, his son, was clutching a crying child in his arms and looking up at his father with his big concerned eyes.

"Dean -" John began, seeing as his son's eyes widened.

"I heard her crying," Dean said, holding the child protectively to his chest. It was a sad sight, John thought, to see his son, still far too young, with such responsibility behind his eyes, and strength to his stance that no child needed. "I couldn't leave her."

"Pass her over," John said, crouching to his son's height and reaching his arms towards him. Dean parted easily with the child, letting her rest in his father's arms.

"Emma," Dean said and John looked away from the still crying bundle to meet his son's eyes. "Her name. It's written on the blanket." Pulling back, John looked down at the bloody blanket with a pang in his gut. Emma. Emma Nolan, daughter of Mary-Margret and David Nolan, the victims he'd just identified. His friend's daughter soaked in their blood.

"What are we going to do with you?" John said, standing back to his full height, Dean's eyes following her. He was relieved that the crying had stopped, the little girl gurgling slightly before opening her eyes and looking up at John curiously. Emma, he noted, had her mother's eyes, green and full of hope and wonder.

"Can we keep her?" Dean asked and John fought the urge to groan. Of course he would ask. "I've always wanted a sister," He said and John's heart felt ready to lurch from his chest had it not already lost its fight.

"She's not a stray dog, Dean," John said reasonably, trying to find the best way to let his son down without attracting more attention from the already on edge police force. "We can't just take her home. She needs a family."

"We can be her family," Dean said and John would revel in the innocence of his son's voice had it not been towards such a situation.

"She needs a real family, with parents. A mom and a dad." John said, but he realised his words were pointless when it came to his son. Dean was young, he knew, but he was wise far beyond his years already. He was looking at the prospect of a new sibling like it was the greatest gift he could ever receive.

"Can't we be that for her?" Dean asked, but John could tell by his son's voice that he knew the battle was lost. Wise beyond his years, after all.

"No, Dean. We can't." And then he turned away, gesturing for Dean to climb into the car before him as he held the thankfully no longer crying baby in his arms. Once Dean was settled with his seatbelt on, John placed a wriggling Emma into his arms. "You hold onto her. We've got a drive ahead of us." Dean accepted the babbling infant as her arms wriggled out of the blanket to touch Dean's face. The young boy smiled, buckling his seatbelt over her to keep her close to him.

They reached Portland in just under two hours, Emma having fallen asleep along the way to Deans cooing words. Decided that it was best to get her cleaned up, John rented yet another room in a motel for the night, planning to leave Emma in the capable hands of the foster system the following morning.

Dean wasn't afraid to help, of course, bathing and dressing Emma in some of Sammy's clothes while John did his best to remove the blood stains from everything else. It worked for the blanket (for the most part at least) leaving only discoloured marks easily written off as baby sick behind. John had managed to salvage a crib from the motel owner and had set it up at the end of the bed he and Dean would share. Once Emma and Sam were both settled in the crib, John noticed that Dean seemed nowhere near ready for sleep. It was always a wonder to John just how alert his eldest son was, already ready to keep watch over his younger brother and now, with Emma in the fray, he seemed even more awake, looking at the slumbering infants like a guard dog.

"We could do it," Dean said as John removed his boots and somehow, John knew just what was coming. "We could be her family," Dean said, turning around from where he sat at the foot of the bed to face his father. "And she could be ours. It could work."

"It's too late, Dean," John said, running a hand over his even more lined face. Despite being only over a year since the incident with yellow eyes, the time had not been kind to John Winchester, leaving him more exhausted and feeling older than he thought he ever would. "We're going to give her her best chance, and that ain't with us."

"It could be," Dean said, barely above a whisper as she turned back around to the crib, his hand dangling over the toddlers like a human mobile as he watched their content slumber, neither of them aware of the carnage that had ensued that night.

"Get some sleep, Dean." Was all John said the night before heading into the bathroom, leaving Dean to look down on Emma with a loss he'd not felt in a very long time. The kind of loss that came from having hope for the future, only for it to be torn away.

When Dean awoke the next morning he was lying face down at the foot of the bed, his arm lazily hanging over the edge of the crib where Sam had then proceeded to nibble at his finger with his tiny teeth. He smiled, wiggling his finger slightly and making the two-year-old laugh before he realised. A blanket was around Dean's shoulders and his father was nowhere to be seen. Neither, it seemed, was Emma. She was gone already, John having taken her to the nearest foster home or social worker he could find within the area, dropping off the little girl with no history of who she was, where she came from, or any family to call her own.


	2. Chapter 2

15th October 2001

Whether her parents were alive or not, Emma Swan had always identified herself as an orphan. It was what the social workers called her, anyway, not an abandoned girl or even a foster child. No, Emma Swan was – and always would be – and orphan, and no amount of half heated smiles and foster parents calling her 'one of their own' would convince her otherwise.

By the time Emma was sixteen she'd run away from seven foster homes, the first one being at the young age of eleven having sat idly by and watched as a younger, happier and overall more pleasant little girl was carted off with her new family, adoption papers all signed, the I's dotted and the t's crossed.

Before she'd even turned seventeen, Emma had decided that she'd had enough of being passed around like a useless toy no one was interested in, destined to be left at the backs of wardrobes and the highest shelves out of sight and out of mind. And so she ran away – for good.

It hadn't been an impulsive decision, not at all. In fact, Emma had been dwelling on the idea of fending for herself the majority of her life. If she had managed to survive the brutality of some of the foster homes they had landed her in, with their 'Detention Closets' at the top of the stairs locked by a brass key and the cigarette burns by way of discipline, then Emma was sure she could survive the outside world.

Having bounced around a while, living in six foster homes in the past decade, Emma till found herself back to where she began. Portland, Maine. She'd been found and hour down the highway, abandoned by the side of the road like an unwanted dog, crying and afraid in a baby blanket she still owned. A man, or so the news article said, had found her while passing through, decided to take the child to the nearest foster home or adoption centre he could find. He'd left a name, Walter White, something that only took Emma a couple of hours on the internet to realise was bullshit. And so, her beginnings were and absolute mystery aside from that single stretch of road surrounded by forest and headed to a small time where nothing seemed to happen. Not that Emma had been back, the prospect of a small town far from a appealing to her. Emma Swan may not have known where she'd come from, but she had an idea of where she was going.

An idea that had been proved very wrong indeed after breaking into and stealing and already stolen car and meeting who she'd believed to be the best thing in her life. His name was Neal, a scruffy man, older than she was herself by about seven years, but shed found something in him, a kindred spirit amongst the crime and bravado. He was like her, alone in a world so much bigger than herself, another nameless orphan in a sea of strangers, each of them relying on the other to keep themselves afloat. Neal, it seemed, relied on Emma far more. He'd turned his back on her in a way that sent her already directionless life into a downward spiral. Emma had given him her heart and everything that went along with it and he, in return, had set her up for a crime he committed, leaving her alone once more, imprisoned in Phoenix for eleven months. As if her incarceration wasn't enough, Emma was let with a parting gift from Neal Cassidy, and insult to her already septic injury as she saw it. Emma was to have his child.

When the time came Emma had long since made up her mind. The only way to heal a septic wound was to cleanse it, and as much as it pained her, she would be a sepsis on this child's life. And so, she parted with her new-born son, barley even looking at his face, let alone holding him as she clutched tightly to the hospital bed, feeling the handcuffs around her ankles as she tensed every muscle in her body to refrain from looking at his tiny face. If she saw him, she'd love him and if she loved him, she'd never let him go. That was the one thing she needed to do, the only good thing she would ever do. She needed to give this child – _Her child_ – his best chance, even if that meant letting him be without her.

The final three months in persons passed in stoic silence from Emma, her days flittering by a haze of police officers and meals. She didn't eat much, her stomach churning at the thought of what she'd let go. But she couldn't let herself regret and as she showered each morning, the jagged marks across her stomach were a notable reminder of just what she'd lost. The stretch marks were the only evidence besides a slip of paper bearing her name that she had carried a child at all. And so she was left once more, alone in her confinement, with no one but her demons for company.

When Emma opened her eyes, the first thing she noticed was the sound of conversation from the front seat of what sounded like a pick up truck that had seen better days. The second was how small she was, unable to see over the dashboard of the truck from where she sat confused I the back seat. She opened her mouth to call out, to get the attention of the people in conversation infront of her. Emma was met by the kind smile of a young woman, her dark hair cropped into an adorable pixie-cut framing her pale face, wispy bangs falling over forehead and covering her eyebrows.

"Someone's awake," The woman said, her voice soft like honey, glazing over Emma and leaving an unbearable sense of calm in its wake, the woman's smile the most welcome sight she'd laid he yes upon.

"I'm not surprised," said a male voice with a chuckle, but the man didn't look around, his eyes cast on the road ahead, his body shrouded in the darkness from the street lamp-less road. Emma wasn't sure why she could even make out the woman's features as she smiled down at her, but the more she focused, the more they shifted and until the face was left in shadows, undecipherable from the darkness surrounding them. "Doesn't miss a thing, do you, Emma?" The man asked, glancing over his shoulder for a beat before turning back to the road. Emma couldn't even make out his smile, her mind fogged as to what the man looked like.

"Don't worry, Baby," The woman said once more, her thin fingers reaching to track gently from Emma's tiny cheek down to her chin. It was an agonisingly maternal gesture that left Emma feeling cold and empty, longing for something she had never had. "We'll be there soon,"

As always happened with this dream, Emma didn't learn where there was as the screeching of the cars brakes sounded in her fragile ears, the truck swerving as the man fought to keep control of the vehicle. The woman cried out for the man, but Emma couldn't hear anything over the cries of a baby, a shrill sound she soon realised to be coming from her own throat.

A soft white light bathed the inside of the truck's cab, the woman's face turning to ivory in the glow as her mouth fell open.

"Take Emma and go!" The man said, Emma finally making out the strong features of his face as they clashed against his thick golden curls, but Emma's cries were drowning out anything else he said. The woman opposed him, of course, but the argument was fruitless.

A hand smashed through the driver's side window and the dark haired woman gave a scream, watching helplessly as her presumed husband was dragged out of the truck, his jacket snagging on the jagged edges of the broken glass. The woman fumbled with her seatbelt, wrestling with the safety device as the man's grunts turned to silence on the road side. She was reaching for the glove compartment, her hands shaking when the fist smashed the passenger side window.

"Emma!" The woman cried, but in vain, before she too was dragged through the window, her sobs echoing through the darkness of the road and shattering Emma's heart as thought it was made of crystal.

There was silence then, nothing but the shrill cries of infant Emma in the backseat, the adult's mind trapped in the terrified body of the baby. And then she was there. It was another woman, not the one who had stroked Emma's cherubic face and told her not to worry, but a woman bathed in light, glowing almost translucently.

Emma could do nothing as the woman smiled down at her, leaning between the passenger and driver's seats and popping the clip on Emma's car seat. She lifted Emma into her arms, and despite the severe cold from the woman's body, Emma felt as the cried died in her throat.

"Emma," The woman said, her slender hands cradling Emma's head as her dark eye seemed to brighten, leaving behind the pain and the sorrow Emma was sure had been there before. "Emma," She repeated as thought tasting the name on her tongue before giving Emma a kiss on the forehead and stepping down into a shallow ditch on the opposite side of the road.

As she lay Emma's body amongst the leaves, she was able to take in the woman's whole appearance, her shoulder length brown hair matted and straggled from its centre parting, clumps of it stuck to her temple with dried blood that seemed to trickle from her hairline down her cheek. The woman wore a long white nightgown, her bare arms almost pale enough to match the material. A large blood stain coated the front, one that had rubbed off onto Emma where she lay amongst moss and twigs, a helpless mess in the presence of what could only be an angel in all her translucent beauty.

And then she was gone, and Emma woke up once more, confused and disorientated with someone saying her name.

"Emma," The voice said and Emma blinked her eyes groggily, feeling as her muscle ached from the less than comfortable matt she'd curled up on. "Emma Swan," She said again and Emma came to, her eyes taking in the bars before her and the woman – Sheila, she remembered the police officer being called – standing with a set of keys and a rather bored expression on her face. "Up you get, Darling," She said, even jingling the keys for good measure.

"What's going on?" Emma asked, pushing her curls from her face and sitting up stiffly as Shelia smiled down at her, not seeming entirely forced which Emma noted was new.

"Your times up," She said, inserting the key into the lock for good measure, gesturing to the table beyond the cell that housed Emma's only personal defects and the clothing she'd been brought in with. "You're going home."

"Home?" Emma hadn't meant for it to sound like a question and judging by Shelia's sympathetic look, she understood. Emma didn't have a home, and the prison and all of its guards knew that. It seemed that orphan Emma was not something she could escape.

"That's right. Get yourself changed and I'll escort you out." And then she was gone, leaving Emma to marvel at the space items left on the table before her. There were her glasses that she no longer wore, her phone that had long since been disconnected and a keychain, on the end of which hung a familiar car key she'd once replaced with a screwdriver. Sheila may not have known it, but as Emma grasped that key in her palm she knew that the older woman was right. Emma Swan was going home, wherever that may be.

September 8th 2003

Hoping had been a foolish notion, Emma knew, but there was something nagging at her gut from the second she'd climbed behind the wheel of the bright yellow bug that told her to drive the twenty-seven-hour trip from Phoenix to Tallahassee. Why she thought Neal was there, she didn't know, but there was a tiny part of her who had followed him here, part of he that was still holding out for that happily ever after. Perhaps they could reconcile, fix what was broken and start a life together. Perhaps they could even find their son wherever he may be. They could be a family; they could be home.

Two years proved long enough for Emma's hope to finally fizzle out and this time when she climbed behind the wheel of the yellow bug, her entire life sat pitifully in a single bag on the back seat, she had no idea just where she was heading. All she knew was that she needed to get away from Tallahassee, away from the wasted years and seemingly endless torment. Emma Swan was ready to move on. But not from everything, she realised as she dug through the front pocket of her rucksack, her fingers brushing the familiarly worn edges of the newspaper article of September 8th 1985, the morning after she'd been found by the side of the road. It was almost poetic, she thought with a scoff as she started up the engine, preparing herself for the journey ahead. The date on her phone read September 7th 2003 making it only a day from the anniversary she had been found. And so, Emma embarked on the twenty-two-hour drive from Tallahassee to Maine. If she'd find her home anywhere, it would seem her beginnings would be the best place to start.

The drive hadn't been unpleasant. Months in prison had taught Emma that sometimes her own company was the best company. And so she spent most of her hours on the road singing along to the radio, drumming her hand sgaainst the steering wheel to the rhythm before she grew bored of the song, or hungry enough to pull over or tired enough to park up for the night.

By the time she even made it to Maine it was gone midnight on September 9th and Emma's eyes were fighting excruciatingly hard to stay open. She was only a few miles from where she'd been found, nothing but the empty expanse of road laid about before her. All she needed was to get to the town nearby and get a room for the night, her investigation into whoever her parents may or may not have been would begin then. Sure, there was no telling if her birth parents had even come from Maine, but they had to at least have been here in order to leave her behind on the side of the road, something that still haunted Emma to this day with helpless dreams and the occasional night terror.

Emma was barely five minutes from the town of Storybrooke before a figure appeared in the road. Slamming on the brakes, Emma barely managed to miss the figure as she swerved off of the road, the front of the bug crashing rather unceremoniously into the Storybrooke town sign.

Had she not been so frantic in her attempt _not_ to crash, Emma would have payed far more attention to the glow that seemed to surround the figure in the road dressed all it white, her red stained night gown fluttering in a non-existent breeze. She also would have noticed the familiarity the woman had to that angel of her dreams, the one Emma had pegged as nothing more than a mental personification of her mother's abandonment. As it happened, these things went unnoticed as Emma's head collided with the steering wheel at a forced great enough to cause blood to slowly trickle from her hairline.

Emma was still conscious when the figure approached and Emma was ready to put anything and everything out of the ordinary down to the head trauma she'd undoubtedly received. But as the driver's side door opened and the figure Emma now recognised quite clearly from her dreams as the ghostly woman with the matted brown hair reached inside, Emma was running out of excuses. Emma barely had the time to gasp when the woman's slender hand landed against her cheek. She felt the chill that settled excruciating into her bones, tensing all of her muscles in turn as the woman gently careened Emma's head to the side, leaning down a pressing a soft, freezing kiss to Emma's temple before phasing out of existence before Emma's eyes. It all fell away into darkness after that, the door to Emma's bug left open as she lay motionless with her head on the steering wheel, blood drying on his temple and the touch of an angel resting uncomfortable on her skin.

Waking the following morning in a jail cell had been a surprise. Waking up at all had been a greater one and Emma was gladly taking the bars obscuring her vison as the lesser of two evils right now.

"What you lookin' at sister?" Emma started at the hostile voice, not noticing that in her daze she'd been staring into the neighbouring cell at an extremely grumpy looking man with a scratchy, grey lined bearded and mostly bald head.

"Leroy!" A voice announced and Emma blinked slightly, sitting up straight on the cot she'd been asleep on and doing her best not to fall off. "If I'm going to let you out, you need to behave." The man said, reaching the cells beside Emma's and twisting the key. He was a handsome man, Emma supposed, sweet looking, with bright doe eyes and adorable scruff covering his chin. "Put on a smile and stay out of trouble," the shorter man, Leroy, put on the falsest smile Emma had seen before sauntering out of what she'd quickly grasped to be the sheriff station.

"Where am I?" Emma asked, standing up by the bars, trying to peer out of the station's windows at whatever town was waiting beyond it. The man – or Sheriff, as Emma was quickly grasping – seemed to find it all very amusing. "Seriously." She asked again, spying her red leather jacket hanging up on the coat rail on the opposite side of the room.

"Seems the apple cider in the area is a little stronger than we thought." The man chuckled, smiling jokingly at Emma as he rummaged in the drawers of an empty desk.

"What – I wasn't drunk!" Emma said, abashed, her hands grasping the green painted bars in front of her. "There was a…" Emma trailed off, starting to realise how crazy she was about to sound. Still, it would be better than the sheriff thinking she was drunk. "A woman standing in the road."

"A woman?" The sheriff laughed. It wasn't patronising which Emma supposed she should be grateful for, but he did seem awfully amused by the young woman in the cell. "Right."

"Hey! I'm telling the truth." Emma argued, standing up a little straighter, pushing her thick glasses further up her nose. Granted, the sheriff had no reason what so ever to believe her, but she was still hoping that he did. Not only was she new in this town, but being both imprisoned and labelled a nut case on her first day was bound to be bad press.

"Seems you've had a run in with our very own Mourning Mother," The sheriff said, still as amused as before. Emma, however, was feeling far more intrigued.

"The what?" Emma asked, her chin rested on the horizontal bar as she watched the sheriff go about what was presumably daily business.

"Also known as the Woman in White, the Weeping Wife, the Vengeful V – You get the idea." He broke off. Clearly, the excuse of a woman in the road was a common one, enough that the sheriff found it amusing and not irritating, at least.

"What is that?" Emma asked, standing on her tp toes to try and keep the Sheriff in sight as he manoeuvred around his station. "Who is she?"

"It's a joke," He said, appearing in front of Emma's cell once more, keys in hand as he placed familiar paperwork on the empty desk. "I'm going to need your name, Miss?" He asked, opening the cell door to allow Emma out.

"Swan," She said, stepping across the threshold of the cell, feeling just as much liberation as she did when she'd stepped out of her cell in Phoenix. It was hard to feel released from a prison when you didn't feel trapped in the first place. "Emma Swan. Who did you say she was again?"

"It's just a ghost story locals tell their kids about the road at night," The sheriff said, gesturing for Emma to take a seat at the desk. She didn't take it, preferring to look out of the window at the frankly quaint looking town outside. All neatly trimmed hedge rows and wave friendly towns folk. "There's very little truth behind it."

"Little?" Emma continued, turning back to the sheriff who's accent she was still trying to place. Having not been too far out of America, Emma wasn't overly familiar with anything that wasn't that. She'd catch it in the end, she was sure of that much at least.

"Well, years ago a woman did die on that road," The sheriff said, taking a seat himself, his pen gliding across the forms he was filing out about Emma's apparent crime. The most she'd done, she was sure, was cash into the town's sign, and even that can't have done too much damage from her little yellow bug. "Her husband, the mayor, died the following year." Emma had always loved ghost stories, even the bogus ones about axe murders in hotels or lollipop wielding six year olds. It was strange, but after her childhood, Emma came to find that those who did the real damage to someone's life were very much alive and very much human. "That doesn't make it haunted."

"Who said anything about haunted?" Emma said, but it was making an awful lot of sense to her. Sure, it was irrational sense, but it was the most she had. She'd seen the woman before, she'd been sure of it, the same ethereal glow, the white skin the blood stained dress. This woman had been haunting her dreams for years, she was sure. Haunting a road didn't seem that implausible.

"You've got that look," He said, eyeing Emma knowingly over the top of his paperwork.

"What look?" She asked, but she knew exactly what he was talking about. If her ears were able to prick up, she was sure that they would. I was taking all she had not to tilt her head like a confused puppy.

"The one of somebody who's looking for trouble." That time Emma did tilt her head, not like a puppy, but no less curious. "You see it a lot as a sheriff."

"Not trouble, but I am looking for something," Emma said, finally taking the seat opposite the sheriff. If anyone was going to be able to help her with this, it would be him. At the very least she could try and weasel some files out of him, some names perhaps. It would be enough to go on, that was more than she had now. "Is this Storybrooke?"

"You did hit our sign." He said, but there was no harshness behind the words. In fact, he sounded amused, something Emma was beginning to realise was this sheriff's specialty. "I don't blame you for your confusion. What are you looking for?"

"My parents," Emma said, her voice surprisingly steady despite how harshly she was clenching her jaw, her hands clasped tightly on the desk before her. "They either came here, or were coming here, or just passed through here twenty years ago." The sheriff raised his eyebrow at her. Emma didn't blame him, she sounded incredibly naïve, grasping onto hope where hope wasn't that present. He probably thought she was just another lost child in the system looking for an excuse to find home. He wouldn't be entirely wrong. "I just want to know if they're still around."

"Right. Well, small town like this, you tend to know everyone," The sheriff said. Reading the top of the form in front of him, Emma could read that his name was Graham. A nice name, not one she'd heard a lot. It sounded British, or at least from that side of the pond, which explained the accent. "Any names?"

"No."

"Physical description?"

"No."

"Anything at all?" Graham sounded now, at least, a little exasperated. Finding missing people tended to be a far simpler job when you had something to go on, something you could research. All Emma had given him was all she had, a vague destination from twenty years ago.

"Just a date," Emma said, remembering the folded newspaper article still in the pocket of her jacket that was waiting for her not two feet away. "September 7th, 1985," She said, figuring that delving into her already pitiful backstory with this sheriff wouldn't be her best move. "If there was anything that happened that day, anything notable, it could help."

"Well," Graham said, tapping his fingers twice on the desk before standing. "As you can see, there are a hell of a lot of file in here," He said indicating to three filing cabinets in a row. Emma didn't know much about police stations, but she knew that they had a filing room at least. For there to be any more than one filing cabinet in the main room indicated to a serious filing overload. "Anyone of which could hold and answer. If you're willing to wait, that is."

"Yes. Whatever it takes."

"Alright then." He said before getting to work, pulling open draws and flicking through folders. Emma sat paitently while he did, spinning around in the office chair and staring at the ceiling. It didn't take as long as Emma expected, but after a quick expedition to what Emma assumed was the filing room, he as back, file in hand. "I've got something."

"Is it it?" Emma asked, jumping from her seat to attempt seeing the folder still in his hands.

"I said it was something," Graham said, snatching the file away with a stern, but kind look. "An incident report from September 7th, 1985, at approximately 23:20" He said, reading one of what Emma could see were three, maybe four papers.

"An incident?" Emma hated how gutted her voice sounded, the hurt she'd been downplaying for years bubbling slightly to the surface. Incidents never tended to end well. "What was it?"

"It's a report of a crash," Graham said, all amusement gone from his voice, the kindness toning into something that sounded an awful lot like pity. "Emma, I don't think you want –"

"Tell me." Emma cut him off. Her hopes weren't overly high, but if they were going to cone crarshing down, she'd rather they burned on the way down. At least then there were ashes for something to rise form, not ruins left t cripple her from the inside.

"Two adults, mid to early twenties, driving a Ford F-100 Truck – Red." Graham said solemnly. Emma sense that she knew the answer to her next question, but she asked it anyway.

"Did they make it?"

"No, I'm afraid they didn't," Graham said, placing the paper back into the folder and shutting it, no doubt in an attempt to close the subject. Emma, however, never was so easily swayed, something Graham clearly picked up on as he sighed, opening the folder once more and reading off of the page like he was reading a textbook and no a death report. "Police found them at the scene an hour or more after it happened. A regular at the diner a couple of miles up the freeway called it on his way home."

"What were their names?" Emma asked, fighting to keep the anxiety out of her voice. If this was really it, if these were her parents, Emma was hearing their names for the first time from the report of the incident that killed them.

"Emma," He said, not seeming all that willing to give up the information to the obviously emotional girl before him. Emma was told once to put her armour on, she just wished she had it with her right now. "There is no way of knowing that these people were your parents."

"Please," She didn't want to beg. Emma liked to think she had a little more dignity than that. Her voice did sound a little too pleading, but it seemed enough to way Graham.

"David and Mary-Margret Nolan. Married. Nothing here about any children." He said, looking once more at the file before shutting it. Emma, however, wasn't taking that as closure. Instead, she snatched the file from his hands before heading to her jacket. Ignoring Graham's protests, she reached inside the pocket of her jacket, gripping the slightly scrunched newspaper article that was as old as she was.

"it's the same night," Emma said, opening the file onto a surprisingly empty desk before slamming the newspaper down next to it. "The same place, I think. This could be it." She said, gesturing to the papers on the desk, the article seeming to have grasped Graham's interest. There was no reason it wouldn't, baby abandoned by the side of the road near a small town like this one? Emma wouldn't be surprised if there were old women still talking about it while they drank their tea. "This could be them!"

"Or it could be a coincidence." Graham said, reasonably, reaching to close the file once more. It appeared he'd had enough of emotional orphan girls for one morning, assuming that it as morning that is. "Besides, at the time of the crash you'd have been, what? A year old?" He asked and Emma could feel the doubt creeping around in her stomach. "If you were with them the odds of an infant surviving such a crash is slim, let alone going unnoticed by the police."

"Unless someone moved me," Emma said, it sounded ludicrous, she knew, but her dream was feeling extremely potent in the back of her mind, the recurring one of the woman dressed in a blood sodden night gown, her kiss soft but cold on baby Emma's forehead as she placed the crying infant unharmed in a ditch beside the freeway. "Maybe they took me away, or something."

"You're grasping at straws," Graham said, taking back the file as though it had awoken some insanity in the young woman.

"Who identified the bodies?" Emma asked, going so far as the reach for the folder once more, but Graham was a step ahead, holding it out of her reach. As sheriffs went, Graham didn't seem to be the most orthodox of them.

"A friend," Graham said, peeking into the folder and lifting the page, but not enough for Emma to see. It was childish, she knew, but Emma found herself trying to go up on her tip toes to get at least a glance if nothing more. "Walter White. Says he was on the trip with the Nolan's and fell behind to get gas. He stopped at the scene after recognising the truck."

"Walter White," Emma said, eyes widening at the recognition to the name.

"That's what it says," Graham said, but didn't elaborate. Not that Emma minded, she'd instead gone back to the empty desk grasping the browning article in her hand. She'd read her story a thousand times; she knew every paragraph as well as she knew her own name. And Walter White was a name that Emma had always wanted to find. He was the man who had found her, the one who'd left her with the foster family just over eighteen years ago. "Does that means something to you?" He asked, but Emma was already rushing off.

"I need to go," She said, trying to slip into her jacket as awkwardly as was humanly possible before snatching her phone and keys in the zip lock bag off of the desk. "Am I done here?" She asked as a second thought.

"Yeah, you're all signed off, but wait –" Graham called, but Emma didn't wait. She was out of the door and into the streets of Storybrooke in a heartbeat, the cool wind whipping her hair across her face as she scanned the area for a town hall or a library, or anything that could hold city records. She may not have much, but she had a link. She had Walter White.


	3. Chapter 3

October 2003

Everything turned into a whole lot of digging after her conversation with sheriff Graham. Emma had started in the Storybrooke library, looking up anything and everything she could on a Mr. Walter White. When that turned out to be a dud, she headed over to the town hall, deciding that any records worth reading would be there.

She wasn't surprised when there was, once more, no record of any Walter White. What she did find, however, was a death certificate – two of them, in fact. One for a Regina Mills, the mayor's wife, murdered and left in a ditch beside the road, and another dated to the same night. This one hit Emma a lot harder as she read the dates written for both birth and death. Snow Mills was barely a year old when she'd been killed alongside her mother in 1969. It had intrigued her, that was for sure.

It wasn't long before Emma figured she had a knack for finding people.

She'd been out of Storybrooke for over a month when she finally dug up the truth about Walter White, the first part being that Walter White didn't exist. Or at least, he didn't anymore. The only Walter White that Emma had been able to track down even remotely close to the East coast had died three years before she had even been born, making the likelihood that he had found her by the side of the road as an infant incredibly slim. There was a name she'd managed to dredge up, the name of a man who had been wanted in more than one state for fraud but never seemed to be caught. He was illusive, that was sure, there wasn't even a house under his name. But there was a name, and as Emma was beginning to learn, a name was a very powerful thing.

The name was John Winchester, and according to the files that lay spilled over her lap and the various spare seats in the bug.

There wasn't much on him, at least not after 1983 when a freak fire had destroyed his family home, killing his wife Mary in the process. After that he became something of a ghost, him and his two sons, but there were specks of him here and there, enough that Emma had picked up on it. The most recent one had been in Nebraska. As with most of her leads with this search it was a flimsy one, just a phone call to the right people and his name had cropped up alongside another. Harvelle's Roadhouse.

It hadn't taken much thought before Emma was back behind the wheel of her bug, leaving the motel room she'd been squatting in for those few hours and beginning her journey across the country to Nebraska.

* * *

Overall it took twenty-eight hours for Emma to make it to Nebraska alone, and then another two or more to locate the roadhouse.

She wasn't sure what she'd been expecting when she'd found the address, but somehow the small, run down looking saloon surrounded by sandy terrain hadn't been it.

Everything was empty, far more so than Emma had expected for any kind of business, but after a quick regard of the area, she decided the head inside.

The interior was no less impressive than the exterior. Everything was wood, the floors ceilings and walls and bar. Light fought to penetrate the dusty windows, leaving the saloon dimly lit and even more dank than Emma had thought before. It wasn't a bad thing, per se, in fact, the Road House seemed oddly homey despite the thick smell of spilt alcohol and the wooden bannisters snapped like braches of a tree a bear had fallen from.

Emma had barely been inside five minutes before she felt the cool press of a gun against the back of her head. It seemed the Harvelle's were about as welcoming to their guests as their Road house looked to the outside.

"Don't move," The voice said, clearly a woman and Emma felt her hands rising almost instinctively in defence. She didn't speak, just tried very hard to keep her breathing even. She didn't come all of this way to get shot in the head by a hostile bar owner. "Who are you? And what do you want?"

"My name's Emma," She said, keeping her voice even. The hand holding the gun was firm, unshaking and confident. That was not something to be laughed at as Emma too rightly knew. If someone was afraid to take a life, or of holing a gun it showed in their vey grip and the steadiness of their hand. Whoever this woman was, her hand was steady as a rock. "I'm looking for someone."

"I'm going to need a little more than that, Miss," The woman said and Emma fought not to jump at the sound of the gun being set, ready to fire with just a press of the trigger.

"His name's John. He knew my parents, or who I think are my parents." Emma said, but the voice on the other end remained silent. "I'm just looking for answers."

"Who are you parents?" The voice asked and Emma felt as her arms begin to ache slightly.

"David and Mary-Margret Nolan."

"Son of a bitch." The voice said and then the gun was gone. "You're Emma." Emma didn't hesitate in turning around, coming face to face with who she presumed was the owner of the Road House. "Hey, I'm Ellen." She said with a smile. She wasn't an old woman, perhaps late thirties – early forties at the most – with past shoulder length hair and dark eyes. She was regarding Emma with a strangely awed look.

"So, it's true?" Emma asked, her voice shaking slightly. If Ellen could put together The Nolan's names and come up with hers then a coincidence was no longer the word to cover whatever hunch was dwelling like a sleeping dragon in Emma's stomach. "David and Mary-Margret, they're –"

"I always wondered what became of you," Ellen said, her voice far softer and even brighter now that she'd assumed Emma wasn't a threat. "You've got your mother's chin," she said smiling at Emma like she'd just found some kind of unicorn.

"You knew them? My parents. What were they like?" Ellen was still smiling as she walked behind the bar, already picking out two granity whiskey glasses that looked a little worse for wear and placing them atop the bar.

"You're going to need to sit down for this," Ellen said, gesturing with the opened bottle of what Emma hoped was whiskey towards the bar stool. Seeing no reason not too, Emma took the seat and the glass offered by Ellen before she explained everything. And by everything, Emma truly meant _everything._

* * *

Sure, she'd been telling herself that the woman in the road, the one from her dreams, had been a ghost - or an angel, at least - the story sheriff Graham had told her of the murdered wife on the road being the most plausible. But there was something about hearing someone say it aloud, of knowing such a thing was possible was absurd. Emma had nearly stormed out five minutes into the conversation. She hadn't though, not after she'd moved to make her leave and Ellen's hand had closed over hers. The sincerity in the simple gesture was enough for Emma to stay, for the conversation at least, and then she could leave and never think of such insanity again.

But the maternal concern in Ellen's voice had left Emma stumped for an escape. The woman cared, she understood exactly what was going through Emma's mind and she knew just what to say to combat it all. It was ludicrous, the idea of spirits and werewolves, vampires and demons alike running amok throughout the world. And yet, it seemed to make everything make sense.

"I know it's a lot," Ellen said, pouring Emma another glass. She had to been on her third, maybe even fourth, whiskey now, and the liquid burning down her throat was the only real thing keeping Emma grounded. It all felt like far too much. Ghosts were real and so was everything else Emma had ever been afraid of, all of them prowling the night like the monsters they were while humanity sat by, oblivious. But not all of humanity. There were people like Ellen – Like her parents – that looked out for the little guy, who stood up against the night and said, 'No, not today.'. Emma had thought up a thousand scenarios of who her parents were, of what they would be like. She'd thought of drug smugglers, criminals, perhaps even teenage runaways – but hunters? That was a whole new can of worms Emma was almost afraid to open. But not quite. "You take your time."

"How does it happen?" Emma asked, passing the glass between her hands, trying hard not to look at Ellen's kind face.

"How'd you become a hunter?" Ellen asked, sounding almost surprised by the question, but she didn't seem any less understanding. "Most people learn about the things that go bump in the night and then they search out places like this. A hunters stop." Emma couldn't help but smile at Ellen's pride, it seemed contagious. Emma was feeling pretty proud of herself – well, her parents at least. This lifestyle, as terrifying as it was, seemed like the answer Emma had been searching for, her identity almost. If this is where she came from, perhaps this was also the way she should be going. No more lost little girl. "Places like this house some of the best hunters in the business."

"Like John Winchester?" Whatever pride she'd felt fell away by the coldness that bestowed itself on Ellen's face as she began pouring herself another drink.

"Don't get me wrong, I loved John," Ellen said, tipping her glass towards Emma as thought to check she was listening before tossing the golden liquid back in one gulp. "He was like family to me once. But ain't no good ever come from trusting a Winchester." She said, slamming the glass back onto the bar. "You remember that, my girl, and you just might make it."

Despite her hopes, Ellen didn't lead Emma to John. Instead, after a brief introduction to Ellen's daughter, Jo, and the advice to always keep salt close by, Emma was sent on her way with a head full of overwhelming information and an address written in her pocket.

* * *

After five hours of driving and constant checking of her map, Emma had made her way to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. It was a beautiful place, Emma thought. It was dry despite the cold, something Emma had expected from the area, but she could still feel the shiver setting in her bones as she turned the heating up as high as it would go inside the bug. As it happened for the poor girl, tired from so long on the road, that wasn't very high, leaving Emma still shivering every once in a while despite her zipped up jacket and beanie sat snugly over her curls.

Following the address Ellen had given her, Emma found herself steering the bug down a narrow driveway, a few leafless trees either side of the track as she drove under the large sign made of scrap metal that read 'Singer Auto Salvage'. Other than the address, Emma had a name, something she was finding herself with a lot of recently. Bobby Singer, presumably the owner of the salvage yard.

The auto yard itself had to cover acres of land, almost every inch of it covered with scrapped and rusting cars piled one on top of the others quite precariously, yet the towers didn't waver. At the end of the dry dusted driveway Emma parked her bug in front of a large, painted blue house. It looked like the ideal family home with white shutter on the windows and even a porch large enough for a porch swing should the owner chose to attain one. The house, however, didn't look all that homey, at least, not as Emma had always imagined. The paint on the house was peeling, revealing the greying wood beneath. Weeds grew in the grass and twined up the sides of the porch, in front of which was parked a beaten up blue truck that looked as though to had seen better days. Whoever Bobby Singer was, he clearly had more important agendas that didn't involve gardening or house renovation.

Before Emma could even ascend the steps to the porch, she heard the sound of a rifle being cocked and footsteps behind her. If there was one thing Emma had learnt about hunters, it was that they weren't the most welcoming bunch.

"Who are you?" The voice said, clearly male, but with little bite to it, nothing like Ellen's had been on first encounter.

"Ellen sent me," Emma said, figuring that would be the better place to start than her identity. It worked as she heard the disengaging sound of the rifle behind her and the distinct sound of a shell hitting the floor. "I'm Emma," She said, turning around to face the man behind her, most of his face being hidden beneath the blue and white baseball cap on his head.

"Why'd Ellen send you?" He asked. It didn't escape Emma's noticed that the rifle was still very much in his grasp, but he didn't seem to be actively pointing it at her, which was a win.

"I want to be a hunter," Emma said, standing up a little taller. She probably didn't look the part, not even twenty years old yet standing in the middle of a stranger's scrap yard with a red leather jacket over her shirt and her boots laced a little too loosely. Definitely not hunter material, and gathering by the raised eyebrow Bobby was giving her, he agreed. "My parents, they were hunters before they died,"

"Parents?" Bobby asked, regarding Emma cautiously. It was easy to presume that hunting with a profession encased in constant paranoia. Even as she drove from Nebraska Emma found herself looking over her shoulder, checking for monsters lurking by the roadside. Shed thought it was illogical, but apparently not.

"Mary-Margret and David Nolan?"

"Emma?" It was getting strange to have so many strangers know her name, but Emma didn't feel the need to dwell on it right now. Chances were her parents were well known amongst the hunters, that or hunters were few and far between. Whatever the reason, it didn't quite add up to the amazement on Bobby Singers face. "Lord, I've not seen you since you were a baby." Emma wasn't sure how used she should be to people looking at her like that, with wide eyes and sad smiles.

From what she'd seen from pictures in the paper, a couple of photographs from Ellen and the coroner's report she'd managed to obtain from the Stroybrooke hospital, she didn't look a whole lot like her parents. She had aspects of them, of course, but nothing major. Like Ellen had said, she had her mother's chin, along with her pale green eyes, but aside from that she looked nothing like the kind faced woman with the dark pixie cut. And all she had from her father was the blondeness of his hair that fell into soft curls. It was no wonder people looked at her that way, only realising that she was the daughter of their lost friends after she'd mentioned it. Perhaps the resemblance became more refined when the truth came out. Emma supposed she'd never know.

"Come on in, girl. I'll get you a beer or something." Emma didn't object. From the last couple of months she'd had a drink sounded about right.

The interior to Bobby Singer's house was no more well-kept than the outside. The floorboards creaked under Emma's boots as she fought to not trip over the mountainous piles of books that seemed to lay littered across the entirety of the front and living room. The rooms seemed dark despite Bobby flicking on the lights as he passed them, grumbling over his shoulder things to Emma that she probably ought to be listening to.

"Is this?" Emma asked, stopping beside the mantle place, her fingers training towards a thin golden photo frame sitting contently in the dust as though it hadn't been moved in years. If Emma's assumptions for the photo were correct, she'd assume it hadn't.

"Yep. That's your mom alright." It was strange to see her like that, smiling beside Bobby on his sofa, dressed like any normal person would with her collared shirt and cardigan. Emma was so transfixed on the woman's soft, smiling face, that she almost didn't noticed the infant sat on Bobby's lap, wispy blonde hair covering her round head and large full of wonder. "And that's you,"

"You really knew them?" Emma asked, eyes not straying from the child so happy in the arms of her mother's friend, even as said friend passed her an uncapped beer. It was enough to know that Emma's parents were gone, it was something else entirely to think of the life they had left behind. Emma may have never known her parents, but they had ever known her either, neither had the friends who had clearly adored her so much as an infant.

"Everyone knew the Nolan's," Bobby said, as though it was obvious. Perhaps it was, Emma supposed she'd never know. "but you're not here to learn about your roots, are you?" he asked, but Emma sense he already knew the answer.

"How did you –"

"Ellen," Was all he said before taking a drag on his bear. Figures, Emma supposed, it was Ellen that had sent Emma to Bobby, it only made sense that she'd call ahead. What didn't make sense, however, was that Bobby still seemed so trigger happy when he was expecting company. "So, you think you've got what it takes to be a hunter, girl?" It didn't sound patronising, but Bobby's voice didn't sound overly enthusiastic.

"I know about this stuff now," Emma said, her finger nails scratching at the label on the beer bottle as she spoke. "I'm not the kind of girl to lie back and take things on the head. If someone is going to try and tell me who I am, I'm just going to punch back and prove them wrong." She said and caught a glimpse of a smile cross Bobby's features under his cap.

"Well, you'd best learn how to shoot then,"


	4. Chapter 4

**And here's another update! I'm getting really muddled up with the dates at the moment, so don't be surprised if there are any inconsistencies or if they change.**

 **Let me know what you think!**

* * *

October 9th 2006

Granny's diner was a small place, set just under nine miles outside of the town of Storybrooke. It was quiet most night, only two real regular customers, both of which lived in cabins in the woods. They weren't the friendliest of folk, but they were kind enough to Granny Lucas' and the waitresses of the diner. Other than that the patrons were travellers, people passing through Maine in the need of a caffeine boost and perhaps a bed for the night in the motel Granny owned across the parking lot.

Over all, it was a great place from Emma to lay low. After living with Bobby for just under two years, Emma had decided it was time to go it alone, to finally hunt by herself. She'd one well by herself, she thought. She'd taken out a nest of vampires in a small ton in Virginia, a vengeful spirit at a school and even a couple of werewolves who were skulking around California. But after a year of hunting alone, she'd decided she was ready to go back to where it had all began.

What had started out as a simple enough case, Emma having already identified the spirit who was haunting the freeway outside of Storybrooke having been attacked by it twice in her lifetime already. All that was left for her to do was salt and burn Regina Mill's remains and the death of her parents would be avenged and she could choose to go about her life as normally, or as obscurely as she wished.

And yet, here she was, two months after getting into Maine, still working at Granny Lucas' diner, befriending the locals and even living there. Well, strictly speaking, Emma lived in her car. It wasn't the worst place she'd ever slept, and she had everything she could possibly need. Granny had offered her a room at the motel, of course, but Emma had been so sure she wouldn't be sticking around that she refused the old woman's 'charity'. Granny had looked ready to drag Emma into one of the rooms and lock her inside for weeks, but her granddaughter, Ruby, who was a similar age to Emma had stepped in, saying that Emma could use the facilities above the diner where she and her grandmother lived and call it even there. She'd not been thrilled about it, but Granny had agreed.

It took perhaps two weeks of living with the Lucas' and a hell of a lot of research for Emma to figure out there was something different about the family who so welcomingly opened their home to the lowly orphan girl. It took another two of hunting until she realised that the werewolves she was currently sharing a diner with were not quite the same as those in the journal Bobby had gifted her. After the first body had been found in the forest, Emma had begun her investigation just as Bobby had taught her. She found the patterns fast – bodies left mauled in the forest along with the alignment to the lunar cycle – and everything fell into place.

That was until Emma had attempted to shoot Ruby with a silver bullet. Needless to say, it hadn't worked as intended, leaving Ruby with nothing more than an open wound on her upper arm and daggers in her eyes. It also hadn't gone down well, meaning that Granny had pulled a crossbow on her as Emma held her pistol at eye level, ready to take them out with a single click.

Bleeding and slightly pissed off, Ruby had been the one to diffuse the situation, explaining how she wasn't like the werewolves Emma knew. She wasn't a random monster born from tooth and claw. Ruby was born a wolf. her grandmother having passed the gene through generations, and she'd die one too. It wasn't something that could be cured, Emma knew, but after years of practice, it seemed it could be controlled on a diet of animal hearts and a lot of calming thoughts.

After what felt like hours, Emma had lowered her gun and Granny had let her crossbow fall onto the table. A very long conversation ensued that, Emma explaining that her name wasn't, in fact, Leia, and that she'd become a hunter to avenge the death of her parents but had become sidelined by the werewolf problem in the woods. The road wasn't easy from then on out, but a sense of trust began to build between the wolves and the hunter. Emma was happy to mislead any hunters that came sniffing around the diner because of mysterious deaths and the case Emma was working on, and in turn Ruby and Granny allowed her to stay. Hell, Emma and Ruby even became something akin to friends. The age gap between them was tiny and they both stood on the outside of the ordinary world looking in. It was an odd friendship. But a friendship nonetheless.

After weeks of days working in the diner and nights contacting anyone and everyone she could find that had contact with John Winchester, Emma wound up with something she was beginning to lose hope in finding. A phone number. It wasn't much, that was for sure, but with the tracking she was able to do, she knew it was still in use. That seemed like enough. She'd thought a couple of years ago, when she was living with Bobby Singer, that he'd just train her to hunt and pass over John Winchester's number, no problems. She had been very wrong. The last time Bobby had even spoken to John Winchester hadn't been pleasant, and ended with the usually kind man pulling a buck shot on him. Emma didn't ask for details and Bobby didn't seem ready to give him. All he did say was that he'd protect the Winchester's, even if Emma didn't mean any harm. Emma may never have had a family, but she understood the need to protect those you loved. She could respect Bobby for that.

But now she had a number, a working number, and she didn't hesitate in calling.

Emma was sat in her bug when she finally made the call, her shift having ended over an hour ago. It was weird, she had no real reason to be calling, she doubted John Winchester even remembered who she was. And yet there she was, her phone open, the number blinking and begging to be called on the screen.

 _"Hello?"_ A deep voice answered and Emma felt her throat close. There was no good w ay to start this. She could hardly open with ' _hi, did you save a baby from a crash site and leave her at a foster home in Portland? Great, that was me.'_ In fact, she could imagine it being close to problematic. " _Hello?"_ He asked again, more irritably undoubtedly from Emma's radio silence on the opposite end.

"John?" Emma asked rather unnecessarily. There was silence on the other end and Emma found her stomach twisting. She'd thought, for a moment, that he'd hung up, leaving Emma guessing once more.

" _Who's asking?"_ The voice said and Emma felt her breath ghost out, her hand running over her face as she fought for the words.

"My name's Emma Swan." She said, not that he'd recognise the name at all, but introductions seemed necessary. "I need you to come and meet me."

" _Where?"_ Emma was shunted slightly by the bluntness of his voice, the agreement Emma could hear despite knowing nothing about her. Emma had learnt in the past years that this line of work was not a trusting one, whatever Emma could expect from John Winchester, she was betting wouldn't be all too pleasant.

"Maine." She said, already digging out diner menu she kept in the glove box of her car and checking over for the address. "I'll text you the address." She said and hung up, no goodbye and nothing else to go on.

* * *

"Pack your bags, Sammy." Dean said, knocking on the bathroom door of the motel they were currently staying in, his father's phone still in his hands despite the strange call having ended over five minutes.

"What?" Sam asked, his voice muffled by the running water as Dean collected his duffle from the beneath the bed. "Where are we going?"

"I'll explain on the way!" Dean called back, slipping his father's phone back into the pocket of his jeans in the case that Emma Swan, as she had called herself, should phone again. He had the address, a diner off of freeway in Maine. It was over a day's drive away, but to meet one of his father's contacts, he'd cross oceans. Dean's father may not have been gone long, but Dean found he was grappling at loose threads and tying them together just for a slither of him, afraid he was going to slip away and fall to dust. Dean had once prided himself on being a strong man, but now he was using that strength to hold onto ghosts and it wasn't something to be proud of at all.

* * *

"There's been a string of mysterious deaths, one or two a year on the same stretch of road dating back to 1969." Sam said, holding his flashlight just above his shoulder to read the file open in his lap. "The cars crash into the town sign and the bodies are found in a ditch nearby."

"Sounds like a vengeful spirit," Dean said, his eyes on the road. They weren't far from the address now, a half an hour perhaps, and Dean was beginning to hope Sam would get so caught up in the case that he'd stop asking why Dean really wanted to go to Maine, of all places. "Any idea who it is ganking people?"

"There's a list of people who died on that road but it'll take some digging in city files to find the exact spirit," Sam said, closing the file and clicking off his flashlight before stuffing both into the glove compartment. "There's also a string of deaths and disappearances in the woods surrounding the freeway. It could be the same thing or a coincidence."

"No such thing as coincidences, Sammy," Dean said, passing the sign that told them they were nearing Maine.

"So, why don't you tell me why we're going to Maine."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Dean shrugged off, his jaw clenching slightly as he focused on the road, missing the don't-bullshit-me look Sam was shooting him.

"We just finished the Rakshasa case and suddenly you want to pack up and go to _Maine?_ Where are we even headed, Dean?" He asked.

"I got a call," Dean said, trying to end the subject there. Clearly, he'd forgotten just who his intuitive little brother was. Instead of dropping the subject like Dean had hoped, he urged him on, eyebrows raised expectantly. "It was dad's phone."

"Woah, wait. Dad's phone?" Sam asked, looking at Dean with the same abashed face he often wore when he realised Dean had been keeping secrets. It wasn't a betrayed look, but he hardly looked thrilled either.

"I keep it charged in case one of Dad's old contacts call." He explained, but didn't elaborate.

"And?" Sam pressed, knowing Dean was holding back but not knowing why.

"And someone called."

"Who was it?"

"I don't know, Sam. But she told us – well, Dad – to meet her a diner by the side of a freeway."

"Sounds pretty sketchy." Sam said "Any idea who it could be?"

"Other than her name? No. But we're going to find out."

* * *

"Leia," Ruby called from behind the counter, busy passing order tickets through to Granny in the kitchen. "They're yours." She said, pointing to the two men who'd just entered the diner, the glass door dinging shut behind them. From what Emma could tell, they were both handsome men, one of them taller than the other with softly curling brown hair and the other was stockier, his dark hair cropped shorter. One thing Emma certainly noticed – they were considerably over dressed for this diner, or any diner for that matter, with their dark suits and clean white shirts. It was a peculiar sight, that was for sure.

"Welcome to Granny's," Emma said, flashing her bight, customer smile to the two men as they took a seat in the booth closest to the back of the room. "What can I get you?"

"Coffee for me, black," The longer haired one said and the other man agreed, giving Emma one quick once over before looking back to his companion.

"Coming right up," She said, pushing her glasses a little further up her nose before turning and walking away. Emma had barely made it back to the counter before she heard the two men begin their conversation behind her.

 _"So, who do you think it was that called?"_

 _"No idea. All I_ _know is that it was some chic calling looking for dad."_ Emma was pretty sure it was the short one talking, his voice far deeper and gravellier than the other man's. He also sounded considerably more aggravated. " _But since she doesn't seem to be making herself known,_ _let's_ _focus on our haunted freeway and the othe_ _r deaths happening around here. Any leads?"_

 _"The reports say they bodies were shredded. Like they were torn apart – mauled almost by –"_

 _"Some kind of animal."_

"You know it's rude to eavesdrop," Emma started slightly at the sound, Ruby's hip bumping against her own as she slid the coffee pot in front of her. "No matter how handsome they are."

"Careful, Ruby," Emma said, grasping the pot by the handle. "I'd rather not trip over your tongue dragging along the floor." She only narrowly dodged as Ruby swatted her arm before she was walking back towards the two men. It hardly escaped her notice that any conversation the boys were having in hushed whispers silenced when she was in earshot. "here's your coffee," She said, filling up their mugs while they stayed quiet.

"Thanks," one of them said, the one with the longer hair and kinder eyes.

"Yeah, thanks, darling," The other one chimed in, even going so far as to wink up at Emma. It wasn't anything she wasn't used to. When you worked long hours at a diner on the road it was customary to have at least some lurking locals, perhaps even a stranger or two that fancied giving you the eye. Needless to say Emma didn't stick around long enough for him to say anything more.

" _Dean, are you sure?"_ She heard the longer haired one ask. It wasn't exactly hard to hear them, the diner pretty much empty besides th e two men, a couple of truckers sat at the bar and a man who lived in the woods. He was nice enough, Emma thought, and he tipped well. " _There's no mention of hearts in the papers, we can't be sure it's wolves."_

 _"Well, whatever it is,_ _I'm sure that pretty little waitress will know something,"_ And then he was standing and sauntering his way over to the bar where Emma and Ruby stood. If she was being honest, Emma wasn't sure whether she should be offended or relieved that Dean, as he was apparently called, was speaking about Ruby and not her. "Good evening, Ma'am," He said, rifling in his pocket before pulling out an ID badge and flashing it to Ruby who looked anything but impressed. "Agent White, do you mind if I ask you some questions?"

"I'll leave you to it," Emma said with a smile, watching as the other man, the still nameless one, finished off the rest of his coffee. She could see him flipping through his phone as she got closer, but he looked far from interested in whatever he was reading. "Can I top you up?" Emma asked, standing beside his table.

"Oh, uh, sure," The man said, pushing his mug towards her so she could refill it.

"So, you both FBI?" Emma asked, being nosier than perhaps a normal waitress would be. It wasn't that she was rude, she just didn't for a second believe that the other man was FBI, her super power screaming in her ear with every word he said.

"Yeah. Agent Pinkman," he said, even reaching into his own blazer for his badge, no doubt.

"No need," Emma said, holding her hand up to stop him. "I believe you," even she could feel her lie behind her sickly sweet smile. "What brings the FBI to our little piece of the world?" She asked, even going so far as the lean against the table. Playing local was easy, it made Emma seem far more welcoming than she was. Hell, she spent most of the time irritated by herself whenever she put on the doe eyes and generous smile.

"Have you heard about the recent deaths around here. The disappearances?" 'Agent Pinkman' asked, clasping his hands together on the table, making him look far more professional than when he'd been sat alone. Emma couldn't help but wonder if the other women fell for this, if all the needed was the flash of a badge for them to spill all their dirty little secrets. But Emma had grown up with liars, she'd learnt from them. It was hard to lie with the wolves and not learn how to bite back. "Four bodies found in the forest and reports of an animal attack?" It hadn't taken Emma long to learn that the best way to get someone to lower their guard was to play dumb. Who knows what they might let slip if they think you've no idea what they're talking about. But, by the sounds of it, these boys were looking into the case she herself was working on, and so derailing their investigation would probably be her best move. "Nothing? Not in the papers or on the news?"

"I don't watch the news." Emma said loosely. She could already see the exasperation on 'Agent Pinkman's' face, but he was trying to stay polite. All part of the façade, she guessed.

"No talk around this diner about people going missing?" He asked again, but Emma just shrugged.

"I've learnt not to listen to the locals," Emma said again, even smiling for good measure. "Here you find all kinds of crazy. UFO enthusiasts, lonely old guys, conspiracy theorists." She said with a nod to the old guy by the window. The agent followed her line of sight but didn't seem too convinced. In fact, Emma couldn't even tell by the narrowing of Agent Pinkman's eyes if he was annoyed or suspicious, either one wouldn't be that fun, but Emma was sure she could handle what this man had to throw at her. "Me, I'm just a waitress." She said, turning to go back to the counter where Ruby was still chatting away to Agent White.

"And what kind of a waitress needs a gun in her apron?" She felt her steps freeze as the smug smile passed over Pinkman's face. He was good, she had to admit. He could probably pass for a real Fed if he tried hard enough.

"The kind who's running from something," Emma replied allowing herself a smug little smile of her own. He may be good, but Emma had spent the past few years lying her way across the state, she barely even knew what was true about herself anymore.

"Like what?" He asked her. She'd clearly peaked his interest. It wasn't a proper gun, at least not as far as ammo was concerned. But Emma had come back to this town for one reason, and that was to take out the spirit who had killed her parents. Keeping a little rock salt on hand was nothing short of common sense. Bobby Singer had taught her that. "A bad boyfriend? The police?"

"So much worse," She said with a sweet smile, knowing she was infuriating this man. It hadn't taken her long to make the connection between the two men either. They may have different builds and facial structure, but their eyes were a similar shade of green, their hair the same soft brown that was hard to notice when one wore theirs so short. Whoever these two really were, they weren't partners, not with their friendly exasperation and overall familiarity. And judging by the flirty drawl in the other 'Agent' voice as he spoke ti Ruby, they certainly weren't lovers, which left one explanation. They were brothers, and close ones at that. "Tell your brother he's not going to get too far with Ruby." She added, nodding toward where Ruby was smiling at Dean in a way that looked like a half snarl, her white teeth showing and her eyes burning. "She's a bit of a man eater." And then she left, leaving whoever Agent Pinkman really was alone at his table and reaching the counter in time to hear 'Agent White' say his goodbyes.

"Well, thank you for your help. You've done your country a service," Dean said with a forced smile, the eyes he shared with his brother crinkling too much at the corners and his lips pressing together too thinly for it to have been sincere.

"Any time, Agent," Ruby said, her voice low as she waved the agent off, sending him back to his table where his dumbfounded brother was waiting. "We need to talk." She said lowly as she passed Emma, her voice warning as their arms scraped against one another. Whatever it was, something told Emma it wasn't great.

* * *

"Did you get anything from the man eating waitress?" Sam asked as Dean slid back into the booth opposite him, his face scrunching as he took a sip of his now lukewarm coffee.

"Man eating?" Dean asked, the same incredulity in his voice that he had whenever a woman resisted his so called charm.

"Just something the other waitress said," Sam brushed off, but Dean kept his eyebrow raised in question.

"Anyway, she said that she hadn't heard anything unusual about deaths and that people went missing around these parts all the time," Dean said with annoyance. Either the waitress truly was that sheltered to the world outside of this diner or, more likely, she was hiding something.

"Funny. The other waitress, Leia, she said the same kind of thing." He said, remembering the offhanded answers and the seemingly clueless responses. There was something strange going on here, stranger than usual at least. They maybe outside of it, but a small town like Storybrooke was the type of town where gossip moved fast, it should have reached the diner and the waitresses should know _something_.

"So, they're both lying?" Sam could tell that Dean was far from impressed with this job but more importantly, he was getting very intrigued by the two waitresses who lived, supposedly, in their own little bubble. "That's just great."

"There's something else," Sam continued, thinking back on his conversation with Leia, the confidence in her stance and the hunger for details in her eyes. She was smart, Sam could guess that much, but he couldn't figure for the life of him just what it was she wanted to know. "Leia, she had a gun in her apron,"

"What? A young woman can't protect herself?" Dean offered, jumping for once to a logical reasoning. Sam had thought of that, of course, but the way the woman had spoken to him, joking that she was running from something, it didn't add up. A woman owning a gun was far from unusual, but keeping one on hand, in her workplace in such a small town of all places, it wasn't right – something wasn't right.

"Sure, but do they need it in their apron?" Sam reasoned, but Dean still seemed all too convinced. "Where she works is quite possibly the quietest diner I've ever seen."

"So, she's defensive," Dean said, pushing his mug away from him after having taken yet another unpleasant sip of cold coffee. "Or perhaps she's paranoid."

"She said she was running from something,"

"Like the police?" Dean asked and Sam couldn't blame him. They were here to look for whatever was killing and or taking people in the woods and for the spirit haunting the highway. An over protective waitress with her own firearms was hardly the top of his agenda.

"She said it was something worse." Dean raised his eyebrows in acknowledgement, but didn't say anything else. "I don't know, man, something isn't right about her."

"Tell you what, I'll look into it," Dean said, already moving to get out of the booth. "But if we ask anything else tonight we're gonna freak out the locals." He said, nodding his head towards the exit as he threw a couple of bills down to cover the coffee he didn't even drink. "Let's check in the motel out back and come back in the morning."

"Alright," Sam agreed, following his brothers lead and waving a quick, curt goodbye to the waitresses behind the counter before making their leave out into the chilly air of the parking lot.

* * *

Once the two 'FBI Agents' had made it clear they weren't coming back, Emma and Ruby began closing up the diner, a job that usually began with shooing out the locals from their perches which, unsurprisingly, took some time. Small town people were stubborn, and this was coming from a woman who'd been eating the same lunch of grilled cheese and onion rings since she'd been able to cook.

"So, what did the fed ask you?" Emma asked as she and Ruby finished closing up the diner. By closing up, of course, Emma meant that she wiped down the tables and stacked up the stools while Ruby sat atop the counter shouting through to her grandmother in the kitchen and banging her feet against the counter as she swung her legs.

"He was snooping about the disappearances." Ruby said, her voice slightly anxious as she peered through the windows to the empty parking lot outside. Most of the lights inside of the diner were off and it was well past two in the morning anyway, but it was hard to believe you were alone when there were two people snooping around. "He doesn't seem to think it was an animal attack,"

"So, what? He's investigating a murder?" Emma asked, throwing her dishcloth at Ruby in the hopes the woman might do some damn work. As it happened, Ruby's reflexes were far too good and the girl simply ducked out of the way. Whatever Ruby was, it was definitely something else.

"No idea," Ruby shrugged slightly, lifting the edge of her shirt sleeve to reveal Granny's bandage work. Emma was impressed by how quickly Ruby was able to forgive her for shooting – and hitting – her. Not that Emma had been in the situation, but had someone shot her, she would be nothing short of resentful. But perhaps that was just her and her much faster werewolf healing. Although, a silver bullet must have smarted a little. "but if you ask me, he seemed like someone from our side of the fence," She said and Emma caught on immediately. Even Granny's ears seemed to perk up at the prospect.

They'd had hunters stop by before, men dressed in tatty jeans and body warmers who thought they could gather their intel with a little smooth talk and the offer of a great night. It was easy to send them on their way with a quick bat of her eyelashes and an idle threat. But these guys were something new. Impersonating federal agents, that was definitely something for the history books, or perhaps the hunters guide book should there ever be one written. It also seemed very much like something Emma remembered Bobby Singer doing.

"We knew more hunters would come," Emma reasoned. She'd spent weeks trying to track whatever it was, gaining whatever information she could from the regulars, but she was coming up entirely short. Ruby had been her best lead, but that had been a serious dead end. There were still people dying, their bodies torn apart or not found at all and Emma was seriously beginning to doubt her decisions to drive others away. But if it meant protecting Ruby and her grandmother, she didn't quite see another choice. "We can drive them away, just like the others,"

"He seemed pretty persistent," Ruby said, probing at her fast healing wound, her wolf-like tendencies kicking in fast. "I don't think these guys are going to just leave."

"Then I'll have to solve this thing before they do." She said, her mind already running through all the possibilities. It was true that the death happened mostly around the full moon, but the disappearances just didn't match up. It was possible there was more than one beast lurking in the dark of Storybrooke forest, but the likelihood seemed far too slim, especially with the spirit of Regina Mills still haunting the stretch of freeway. Storybrooke may seem welcoming in the day, but it was a cesspit for supernatural activity, fit to bursting with monsters lurking in the dark. "What did you say this agent's name was?" Emma asked, her mind already reeling from the number of possibilities.

"Agent White," Ruby said offhandedly, even going so far as to scoff at the name. But Emma found the name anything but amusing. "Walter White." That was it then, Emma left the diner in a rush, hightailing over to her car with a whole new barrel of questions nagging at her already fit to bursting mind.


	5. Chapter 5

**So, this timeline is getting very confusing, but I think I've figured it out - For now at least.**

 **Let me know what you think and if you spot any irregularities in my timings!**

* * *

"Rise and shine, Sammy!" Dean shouted from the bathroom, tooth brush in his mouth, jolting his brother awake.

"What time is it?" Sam groaned, rubbing his eyes as he pushed himself to sit up in bed.

"Just gone noon," Dean replied, pulling on his jacket and pocketing his phone. "Time for me to question our pretty little gun-wielding waitress." He said with a foamy smile and Sam fought back the urge to groan again as his brother slid back into the bathroom.

"Don't we need a reason to question her?" He asked, grabbing the nearest t-shirt and pulling it over his head.

"Well, while you've been getting your beauty sleep, I did a little research," Dean said smugly, stepping from the bathroom toothpaste free and swiping a folder off of the chest of drawers before throwing it, none-too-carefully, at his brother. "Turns out clueless little Leia isn't Leia at all."

"Then who is she?"

"Emma Swan."

"The girl who called dad?" Sam asked, raising his eyebrows as he opened the file in his lap. Sure enough, there was Leia, free of her black-rimmed glasses and looking up at him from a police mug-shot. Whoever this 'Emma Swan' was, clueless little waitress was clearly not it. But then, why lie?

"The very same." He said smugly, clearly proud of his little discovery. "I saw her getting into her car last night and asked the guy down at the sheriff's office to run the plates. All it took was finding a name,"

"So, what? Now you're just going to storm in and demand answers from her?"

"She knew dad. She called him to come here."

"So, that's enough reason for an interrogation? She might just be a waitress." Sam reasoned, but Dean seemed unconvinced. He'd been that same way since John Winchester's death. Seeing cases where there was nothing and not resting until it was solved. It was far from healthy, but Sam had no way of stopping him. Dean had probably saved more lives and killed more monsters in the past couple of months than Sam had in a year or two.

"I don't think so. Look through the file and you'll get it."

"Dean, wait. Dean!" But he was already gone, shutting the door to their motel room behind him. Sam groaned, falling back against his pillows and rubbing a hand over his face. It seemed he had some reading it catch up on if he was going to try and figure out if this waitress was anything more than she seemed.

* * *

"Back so soon, Agent," Emma heard Ruby say from inside of the kitchen. It was deliberate, she knew, letting Emma know of the _Agent's_ arrival. "What can I get you?"

"Coffee, black." He said rather dismissively, telling Emma that he wasn't here to flirt with Ruby today. She'd have been relieved that she didn't have to watch someone else drooling over the leggy brunette if not for the fact that she could see him through the order window scanning the diner for something. That something was most likely her, meaning that he'd found something. She'd suspected he would.

It hadn't taken Emma long to find her old files on John Winchester, the ones that had been sat nestled beneath the passenger seat of her bug since she'd first dredged them up a few years before. It was there that she found out about his two sons, something Emma had allowed to go entirely overlooked the first few times. There was Sam, born May 2nd 1983, just over a year older than she was and then there was Dean, born January 24th, 1979. She could remember Bobby talking about them a lot, of how he'd all but raised the boys and yet, they never seemed able to pick up a god damn phone and tell him they were okay. Emma hadn't asked, it was hardly her place. As much as she cared for Bobby, his past wasn't her business, just as hers wasn't his. They were good together like that, happy to live in the moment and not dwell too much on one another's pasts. Emma was really starting to miss that paranoid old drunk.

After her quick read of the file, it wasn't hard to put the pieces together after that, 'Agent Pinkman' had after all called Dean by name within Emma's earshot which was enough to make them untrustworthy. After that it was just a matter of research. She'd spent the remainder of her night awake searching on Ruby's computer for whatever she could find on both Sam and Dean Winchester. Aside from being wanted for various crimes including credit card fraud, impersonating federal officers and grave desecration, there was barely a trail. That was until she stumbled upon an article from St. Louis dated March 2006. As it happened, Dean Winchester had died in St. Louis on March 7th following an attempted arrest for torturing two young women and murdering another. It was understandable why Emma was wary of the man currently sitting at the counter wearing plaid in place of his cheap suit.

As it happened, Dean Winchester had died in St. Louis on March 7th following an attempted arrest for torturing two young women and murdering another. It was understandable why Emma was wary of the man currently sitting at the counter wearing plaid today in place of his cheap suit.

"Leia, get those orders out to Dr. Jekyll before he starts nagging," Granny said. She had reason to sound so exasperated. was a nightmare regular, incredibly picky with his food and even more with his service. He was easily Emma's least favourite customer. He'd either love the food and accept it with a big smile, followed by a generous tip as he waved goodbye, or he'd be so rude that Emma would consider drowning him in the jug of syrup on his table.

"I've got it," She said, swiping up the plate of pancakes and the side of strawberries before pushing her way out of the kitchen door and into the diner. Thankfully, Jekyll was close to bearable today which saved Emma some grievance, and it wasn't until she was back behind the counter that the 'Agent' even said a word to her.

"It's Emma, right?" He asked as she passed, halting her steps. "Emma Swan. Might want to get yourself a new nametag." He said, gesturing to the thin, golden badge pinned to the breast pocket of her uniform. It would appear that Emma wasn't the only one who'd been digging if he'd managed to dredge up her name. And Emma knew the power in a name, of all the secrets it could dig up – Foster records, police reports... adoption papers. She could only pray that his brains didn't match his brawn.

"I'll look into it," She said back, setting the coffee pot back down in the machine, hoping that whatever Dean was after, he would let it go. But, as with the rest of her life, Emma quickly learnt that hoping got you nowhere.

"So, why the fake name? Got a bad boyfriend on your trail?" He asked, sipping his coffee and digging his nose when Emma far from wanted it.

"Ask your brother, _Dean."_ She said over her shoulder, poking her head around the window to the kitchen in the hopes that Granny had another order ready so she had a more reasonable escape route from this interrogation than just hiding in the kitchen.

"Smarter than you look," Dean said, not giving Emma the chance to decide if she should be insulted by that comment or not. "Which makes me believe you know more about these deaths than your letting on."

"I don't know what you're talking about." She said with the same sickly sweet smile she'd used on his brother. Clearly, Dean wasn't such an easy guy to pass. When he wanted something, he got it. He was going to be a major pain in her ass, and he knew it too by the smugness in his gaze.

"Tell me, how long have you been here?" He asked again. Any passer-by would assume it was nothing but small talk, but Emma knew better. Dean was asking these questions because he already knew the answers and revelled in the idea of rubbing it in her face. She'd find it almost disgusting did she not do the exact same thing herself, albeit with a little more eyelash fluttering and sweet little smiles.

"Couple of months." She said, not technically lying. She'd been here far longer, always coming back to the same stretch of road that had killed her parents, but she never usually stayed, not until now.

"I'm surprised that you're still here."

"And what's that supposed to mean," Emma said, her voice sharp at the smugness to Dean's smile. It was infuriating, Emma realised, to have someone know about her like this and dangle that information over her head like a dog with a bone. He kept looking at her with his stupid little smile, like he knew something and was just itching to drop it on her like a bomb.

"Well, the longest you ever stayed in one place was two years, right?" He asked and Emma felt her hand gripping her dish towel a little too tightly. "Tell me, because I'm, just dying to know. What did you like so much about Tallahassee?" Of course he'd dug that deep. Emma had been young in Tallahassee, she'd probably left her stench all over the place, anyone could trace her back to there. "Rolling hills? Oak canopied roads? The unmistakably southern hospitality?"

"How did you –"

"I'm pretty good when it comes to digging up people of interest." He said, cutting her off.

"Of course. FBI, right?" She said, tilting her head in question. Emma knew a fake ID when she saw one. What was it Bobby had told her? Don't con a conman. Well, Emma had been in the game long enough to know who were officials and who were posers. Maybe it was just her problem with authority, but she could notice an imposter pretty quickly. Two young brothers in cheap suits that smelt like the boot of a car? They may have had the locals fooled, but Emma had known from the get-go that they weren't who they claimed.

"Why so sceptical?" Dean asked, clasping his hands in front of himself in the same faux professional way Sam had the previous night. They were so similar; Emma couldn't help but wonder if they noticed it themselves.

"Because I'm pretty good at digging too." She said, placing her hands on the counter beside Dean's, leaning down until she was at his eye level. "Not only is Walter White not a part of the FBI, the closest match to that name even close to the east coast, died over thirty years ago." Dean's face fell slightly, fading into a stoic, almost annoyed expression as Emma fought back her own smugness. "I did manage to link him to a guy using his identity, though. A John Winchester, who seemed to pass it to his son, Dean Winchester, often seen travelling with his brother, Sam. All the physical descriptions match, but there is one thing that's not making sense to me."She leant over a little more, her arms crossed on the counter as she looked up at Dean, tilting her head slightly to the side curiously. "Dean Winchester was pronounced dead in St. Louis, Missouri on March 7th of this year." Dean was smiling now, but whether it was because he found the situation amusing or because Emma had cornered him, she wasn't sure. But something told Emma that she was playing with fire, that if she had indeed cornered Dean, it would be unwise to poke at him with a stick. But Emma had never been very good at knowing when to quit. "You're confused. I can tell. But I'm going to let you in on a little a secret. I'm really good at knowing when someone is lying to me."

"Is that so?" Dean asked and Emma hummed her agreement. She was pushing his buttons and she was glad, he'd been pushing hers since he'd walked into her diner.

"So, you can either sit down and tell me what you're really trying to find over a piece of pie, or you can turn around and leave," Emma said, her eyes locking with his, watching the cogs turning in his mind. Dean, to his credit, seemed entirely unphased and didn't look ready to say anything anytime soon. "I guess I'll see you around then." She said, tapping the table with her fingertips before standing up straight and moving to grab the coffee pot once more. She was sure there was someone in the diner in need of a top-up.

"I guess I underestimated you," Dean said with a quiet laugh, shaking his head slightly as Emma narrowed her eyes at him.

"That you did," She said and turned to leave.

"Never would have pegged a nice girl like you as the prison type." Emma froze. It was perfectly reasonable for Dean to have found out about Phoenix, especially as he'd seemed to have dug his way right into Tallahassee. Hell, anyone could know she had been there, it was probably the first thing that popped up in country records beneath her name. "Especially not the kind to give up a baby." That, however, was a little harder to discover, and it was that little snide comment that snapped the chord.

Emma had told no one about her son, not even Bobby, and here Dean was throwing it in her face like a drunken mistake. Emma never tried to so much as think of her son, truly believing she had given him his best chance by sending him away. She had done the right thing, and she'd die before she let some hunter allow her to feel ashamed for that.

"I don't care who you are, or what you're doing here but you are _not_ who I called," She snarled, her eyes narrowed at him across the counter. Dean wondered if she was going to hit him and at that point, Emma was wondering the exact same thing. "Now, I suggest you finish whatever stint you've got going on here and get the hell away from me," She said, pushing herself up off of the counter, throwing he dish cloth back over her shoulder to continue with her shift. "And don't come back."

Dean knew he'd struck an unprotected nerve mentioning her son, and had she not known exactly how to grind his own gears then he might have felt bad for it. Hell, Sam would definitely have made him feel bad about. Instead, Dean counted his little 'stint' as she's called it, as a victory. But, of course, Dean still couldn't just leave well enough alone either.

* * *

Upon leaving the diner, he headed over to the side of the building, edging around to the employee parking spaces, only one of which was currently in use. Dean tried hard not to blanche at the sight of the bright yellow bug he'd seen Emma climb into the night before. Somehow it had seemed far less obnoxious the night before.

It wasn't hard to break into, he found, the security on the car incredibly poor. But that wasn't what struck Dean. What really caught his attention was the contents of the car. Across the back seat lay two pillows and a scrunched up blanket making a sort of bed. The entire front of the car was sprawled with beige paper folders, pages that Dean recognised as both birth and death certificates with a couple of police reports thrown in littering the entire passenger seat and the floor below it as though the car's interior had been hit by a hurricane.

But what really caught Deans eye was the three post it notes stuck to the dashboard, each one with a phone number and a name written on it. _Bobby. Ellen. John._ Whoever this Emma Swan was, Dean was beginning to think he knew just who to call to find out.

" _Dean?_ " Bobby answered on the third ring, no doubt cursing his way towards the phone as he stumbled over books and beer bottles alike.

"Hi, Bobby," Dean said, shutting the passenger side door and heading around to snoop through the trunk. "I need to ask you about something – well, someone."

 _"Shoot,_ " Bobby said, followed by the unmistakably sound of gulping. It seemed it was never too early for the man to start kicking back the medicine.

"What do you know about Emma Swan?" Dean asked, balancing his phone in the crook of his shoulder while he worked to pop open the trunk of Emma's audacious car.

" _You know Emma?"_ Bobby asked, sounding surprised.

"Wait, _you_ know Emma?" Dean countered, having managed to get her trunk open to see the contents inside. He'd expected Bobby to have perhaps heard of Emma, but not know her. Whoever she was, she travelled light, with a single duffel bag left open in her trunk, a few sparse items of clothing pooling out of if across the carpeted floor.

" _Course I know Emma._ " Bobby said sounded exasperated. " _The girl lived with me for nigh on two years._ "

"And you never thought to bring it up?"

" _It never seemed important_." He reasoned and Dean could already feel his aggravation building. He wasn't sure whether it was jealousy that Bobby seemed to be taking in young hunters left, right and centre, or if he was getting a little tired of all the secrets the older man was keeping. Whatever it was, he swallowed it down as harshly as he could.

"Well, she's the one who dragged us out to middle of nowhere Maine and is now telling us to pack our bags and go."

" _She's a feisty one_ ," Bobby said, sounding somewhat nostalgic. Dean was far from going to do but argue with that point, though. " _Did you say something to piss her off?_ "

"Only about her time in prison," Dean said. He was sure he could hear Bobby rubbing his face on the other side of his phone with an exasperated sigh.

" _You idjit,_ " Bobby all but shouted down the phone. Clearly, whoever this Emma was, she didn't just find Bobby's phone number. If Dean had to guess, he'd say that he gave it her in the hopes she'd keep in touch the way he and Sam tried to.

"Hey, she didn't have any issue pushing my buttons."

" _Well, you've not had the life she has,_ " Bobby said and Dean felt his curiosity rising again. He knew enough of Emma's life from the files he'd managed to scrounge from the internet and city hall. She'd been an orphan in Portland, bounced around foster homes and schools, managing six or so different families before she was even ten. Sure, she'd not had it easy, but was her life truly as bad as his? Did she spend all her childhood looking out for her little brother and working her ass off just to gain her father's approval? Did she live her teens knowing what was out there hiding in the dark, just waiting for its chance to take a bite out of her? She may have been without family, but she was safe in her ignorance.

"Do you know why she'd call us or not?" Dean said, pushing the duffle bag aside to search the car for a false bottom. If this girl really was a hunter and she really had learnt what she had from Bobby Singer, then the chances of her hiding weapons in her trunk was high. And it would give Dean the proof he needed to confront her again, maybe even call her out on her own lies.

" _Last I heard she was looking for your old man,_ " Dean had been right about the trunk. Beneath the carpeted bottom lay what could only be described as an arsenal. It had nothing on Dean's own, that was for sure, but she had all the basics. There were various handguns, a box of what he presumed were fake ID's and even a couple of flasks that were most likely full of holy water and even a dream catcher hung with feathers and beads.

"What did she want with my –" But the question died on his tongue as he spotted a yellow bundle shoved against the back corner of the trunk. "Never mind," Dean said, his voice lighter as he reached for the bundle, pulling it out to reveal a very old, but still very distinct baby blanket, knitted from yellow wool with a single name stitched with purple yarn. _Emma._ Dean hadn't seen, let alone thought about, this baby blanket since he'd picked it up, crying baby in tow what felt like a lifetime ago. This Emma was _the_ Emma, the very same one he'd found alone by the road side while his father dealt with the issue of her dead parents. The same Emma Dean had all but begged his father to let stay with them. "I know exactly who this girl is."

It didn't take a lot of thought for Dean to grab the blanket, slamming the trunk closed behind him. If this really was the Emma from over twenty years ago and she really was looking for John, did she know who John was? Did she even know anything about this life or was it just what Bobby had taught her? Was Emma a hunter, or was the arsenal in her trunk merely a precaution. He really doubted that last one, but being defensive against monsters didn't make you a hunter, it just made you smarter than the average human.

Dean had barely made it to the back door before it opened, the other waitress – Ruby, her name had been – slipping out of the exit with a very large, very red bundle in her arms. He wasn't sure why he'd jumped out of the way, or even why he hid behind Emma's car. All he seemed able to focus on was the way her eyes were shifting across the back parking lot, her head tilted back with her nose to the sky as though she was smelling the wind. Whatever she was sniffing for, she seemed to find it because she followed the steps down from the rear exit, unravelling the bundle to reveal an archaic looking velvet cloak. But instead of heading out into the parking lot, perhaps in search of her car or even to the motel to kick out some tenants who'd stayed passed check-out, she made her way further back of the diner, passing the dumpsters, public restrooms and a large water tank and heading instead into the forest, wrapping the cloak around her shoulders as she went. It may have just been how the sun hit them, but Dean was half-positive that her eyes had begun to glow golden.

Never one to shy away from the abnormal, Dean abandoned his newest plan of confronting Emma and instead followed the red streaked waitress into the woods, a gun fit to bursting with silver bullets tucked at the back of his waistband and a head full of indecision. What we he even going to ask Emma about? Why she was looking for his father or why she seemed so desperate that he meet her? For all Dean knew she was just a scared girl with the knowledge of the Supernatural wanting to know who her parents were. Dean would hardly blame her that. But then what? If she was a hunter did he abandon the case all together in the hopes that she handled it? Did he offer her his help? Meeting new hunters had never been a fun experience with the exception of those he'd grown up with. Right now, Dean was truly stumped for an answer.

It wasn't easy, Dean soon found, following Ruby into the woods without her knowing. Hell, if he had to guess, he'd say the girl had supersonic hearing. With every step he took she would spin around, her eyes scanning beneath the trees like a deer fearing the wolf. The deeper they trekked, the harder it became to keep track of the girl, her body seeming to shift through the trees like fog, until even the flapping of her cloak was lost to him. That was, of course, until he tripped over the stupid thing, the thick velvet material tangling around his ankles and sending him face first into the dirt.

Spluttering slightly from his mouth full of earth, Dean pushed himself up, surveying the forest for any sign of the surprisingly elusive girl. But there was no sign of her. Thatis, unless he counted the tracks of large, animal paw prints disappearing into the woods as a chilling howl filled the air. It was a haunting sound; unlike anything Dean had ever heard. It sounded simultaneously like a single wolf calling out for help, and a pack of them sounding the battle cry. It wasn't known to Dean – or any hunter, in fact – about werewolves and howling. As far as he was aware, they turned intohalf-wolf monster made of tooth and claw and tore apart anyone within the nearest vicinity. And as far as Dean was concerned, they didn't wander into the woods wearing a cloak and start howling through the woods. In fact, Dean was sure they didn't howl at all. And with the full moon that night before, the case was starting to make less and less sense. But the howling was starting to grow louder, and if Dean had to guess, he'd say whatever wolf thing this was, it was getting closer, and he didn't want to be anywhere near it when it did.

* * *

"Sammy," Dean called, half barrelling into the motel room, the baby blanket in his hands and the velvety cloak he'd found left in the woods thrown over his shoulder. "I've got something."

"What is it?" Sam asked, stepping out of the bathroom, rubbing his hair with his towel to stop it from dripping.

"A wolf." Dean said, throwing the cloak down on the bed. Sam eyed it warily as though he expected it to burst into flames at a moment's notice.

"You mean a werewolf?" Sam asked, pulling his shirt over his head as Dean lay the baby blanket on his own bed, seeming to make a point of not looking directly at it.

"No, I mean a _wolf_." He said again. "That waitress – the taller one – walked into the woods wearing this weird ass cloak and then she disappeared."

"So, you think she's the wolf?" Sam said slowly, his eyebrows raised as he levelled Dean with a look he was becoming all too familiar with. The look that told Dean that Sam thought he was talking out of his ass.

"Maybe not _the_ wolf, but _a_ wolf."

"Huh," Sam said, sounding awfully amused by the situation. "So, what? Are we just going to sit around and wait for her to come wandering out with a heart in her hands?" Dean seemed to dwell on this for a moment which answered Sam's question in itself.

"Yes. Get your stuff."

* * *

It was well past night fall by the time Sam and Dean saw any sign of life coming from the woods. They'd parked the Impala closer to the woods edge, the headlights off to keep them cloaked in the darkness. The diner itself had been quiet all evening, Dean having kept an eye on Emma from the car to make sure she didn't disappear into the night.

The boys hadn't been sure what they'd expected when Ruby finally emerged. Perhaps for her to be naked like other werewolves, a confused look on their faces as they stared horrified at the blood on their hands. Or perhaps they'd expected for her to still be transformed, all teeth and claws ready to tear out any hearts it could find. What they hadn't expected, however, was for the waitress to emerge from the forest, fully dressed in skin tight leather pants and red sheer blouse like she'd just gone for an afternoon stroll.

"I thought you said she was a wolf?" Sam said, watching as the woman made her way towards the back exit of the diner, the single yellow street light flickering above her. It took a moment, but Dean was able to pick out the dark splatters against her shirt that looked awfully like blood. It wasn't much to go on, but if was enough. Especially if another body wound up bloody and mauled in the woods the following morning.

"She still could be. It's the full moon." Dean reasoned, already moving to get out of the car and go after the waitress. "Let's go check this out."

"Dean, she could just be a waitress." Sam said, following Dean to the trunk, taking the offered handgun stocked with silver bullets.

"Didn't you notice the blood on her shirt?" Dean asked, receiving nothing but a vacant look from his brother. "Look, people have been cropping up dead in that forest for the past few weeks and this girl decides she wants to take a moonlit stroll?" The sarcasm was burning Dean's tongue on the way out, but going by the deliberating look on Sam's face, he was starting to see things from Dean's perspective. Something wasn't right with this little diner sat off of the haunted highway, and they were going to find out what.

"Come on, Dean," Sam said, following him as he climbed from the front sight out into the parking lot. "We need to think about this. Figure out a plan of attack."

"Oh. I've got a plan," Dean said, trying to door handle at the back of the diner while looking at Sam with his usual cocky smile, something Sam had begun to notice never ended well. Before Sam could even question it, Dean had kicked out, hitting the wooden door and breaking through its lock so it swung into the dark and empty kitchen. "Attack," He finished with a shrug before stepping inside, his gun fully loaded and at the ready.

It was eerily silent in the diner kitchen, nothing but the glow of the outdoor street lamps to provide any light whatsoever. Dean looked back over his shoulder to see Sam standing in the doorway, silently waiting for Dean's word to continue. With a few poorly lit hand gestures and two nods of agreement, Sam was heading off to the kitchen's side door to see what lay beyond, likely the stairs leading to the owners home while Dean continued into the main room of the diner.

The main room of the diner was empty too, but the street lamps shone brighter through the windows, casting long shadows through the stools stacked on the bar. It was silent too, enough so that all Dean could hear was his own breath as he fought to keep it quieter. If the waitress truly was a wolf, the chances of her hearing his breath alone was higher than usual. For all Dean knew, she could hear his heartbeat. Dean almost jumped as he felt the hard edge of what was presumably a gun pressed to his lower back.

"Oh God," Dean said, his grip on his pistol not loosening, but his arm fell from its offensive stance. "please let that be a rifle,"

"No," A voice replied, one Dean immediately recognised as Emma's, followed by the cock of the gun as she dug it into his spun through his jacket. "I'm just real happy to see you again." Dean could hear the smile in her voice, the same smugness that came with the upper hand and he fought back the urge to groan. He knew that smile, he had that smile, and it was as infuriating to him as it no doubt was to everyone he'd even done it too. "Don't move," She said again as he lowered his arms from their surrendering pose.

"Not moving, copy that," He said, getting a feel for just where the gun was at his back and remembering one of the first lessons his father had taught him when wielding a fire arm. "You know, you should know something, miss," He said, his head tilting in the conversational way it would despite the fact he was facing away from the woman. "When you put a rifle on someone, you don't want to put it right against their back," He said, remembering as his father demonstrated, giving barely nine year old the rifle and showing him what happened when he placed it at the base of his father's spine. "Because it makes it real easy to do -" and he cut off, spinning the way his father once had, swiping the gun from a surprised Emma's hands and cocking it once more, the shell popping out and clattering to the floor. "That." He said triumphantly, the gun in his hand as he smirked down at Emma. Had he not been so busy basking in his victory, he'd have noticed Emma's fist as it swung towards him, her surprisingly hard knuckles colliding with his nose enough to disarm, but no break any bone. "Sam!" Dean called out, his hand going to his nose to feel from blood in the darkness. "Need some help in here!" It was dark, but he was sure his nose was, indeed, bleeding, and even worse, his vision had become somewhat compromised but the blow, black spots blocking his already limited sight in the dark room. "I can't see. I can't even see," He muttered to himself, not noticing as Emma smiled at him from his side, her gun back at the ready should he make any other stupid moves.

"Sorry, Dean. I can't right now" Sam said, stepping into the main room with both of his hands locked behind his head in submission. "I'm a little tied up." The lights flicked on then, shocking both Sam and Dean with the brightness while Emma just blinked her way past it.

"Sam and Dean Winchester?" Granny asked from behind Sam, her crossbow aimed rather precisely at the back of his head, her apron still tied around her waist and a slightly disgruntled looking Ruby standing just behind her. "The boys you warned us about, Emma?" Granny asked, dropping the pretence that Emma's name wasn't known.

"The very same," Emma said, watching as Dean regained his bearings slightly, shaking his no doubt pounding head. "I thought I told you to leave," Emma said to Dean, her voice chilling as she remembered their earlier conversation.

"Well, I never was very good at following orders," Dean said with a slight laugh despite his predicament. Granny seemed to be keeping an eye on him especially, but her crossbow never wavered from the back of Sam's head.

"Why are you still here?" Emma asked, poking Dean once more in the back with the tip of the rifle.

"To kill me," Ruby said from behind her grandmother, her made-up eyes flickering between the two boys as she crossed her arms over her chest. "I could smell him following me in the woods," She said, looking Dean up and down, from his mud-caked boots to his old and worn leather jacket.

"Wait you could _smell_ me," Dean said, a slight look of distaste covering his face as he looked at Ruby. "Alright, this is getting beyond weird."

"Look, maybe we can talk about this?" Sam said, seemingly the more reasonable of the two. Perhaps Emma had been right, Dean was the brawn, the brains seemed to have gone with his other brother.

"There's nothing to talk about," Granny said, nudging Sam once between the shoulder blades with her crossbow. "You've threatened my granddaughter, so I don't see you boys walking away from this one."

"Well you're little granddaughter has been killing innocent people." Dean piped in, looking at Ruby with a thinly veiled contempt, whether for her or her species, Granny didn't know.

"I haven't," Ruby said, her voice desperate, something like fear on her face as she looked at Dean. But Emma knew hunters and she knew that they could rarely be reasoned with, especially by the monster they were after.

"If I had a dime for every time I heard a wolf say that," Dean said, seeming to feel awfully confident despite being unharmed with both a gun and cross point pointed in her general direction.

"It's not her," Emma said, enunciating each word. She could see as Sam looked at her with interest and Emma knew that if she needed to get through to Dean, then she may well have to go through his brother to do so. "I'm telling the truth. There's something else out there and it's not friendly. So we can stand here bickering or we can get the _real_ killer."

"I ain't working with her," Dean said, gesturing to Ruby with a lazy nod of his head. Emma saw as his brother rolled his eyes, clearly having had enough of being held at arrow point.

"Dean, come on," Sam reasoned, his exasperation with his brother clear.

"You can't trust werewolves. You know that!" Dean argued and Emma couldn't help thinking his anger was directed to her as well.

"You have no idea what you're dealing with, boy," Granny said and Emma could see, even with his back to her, as he rolled his eyes at the older woman.

"These aren't the wolves you're looking for," Emma tried to reason, but only Sam seemed to be listening. It seemed that once Dean set his mind on something then he really did go for it. This wasn't a man who's will was easily swayed.

"Cut the Jedi mind crap," Dean snapped at her, and Emma really fought the urge to hit him with the butt of her gun and deal with the far more reasonable brother. Still, as tempting as it was, she figured it would be ill advised.

"Look!" Emma said, loud enough to get Dean to swivel slightly and face her. "Ruby isn't one of those watered down scratch victims," she explained, her chest rising with the frustration of the entire predicament. Why the Winchesters couldn't simply be like all the other hunters who had come sniffing around. Emma could deal with them and send them on their merry way. Why did these two have to be so different? "She can control it."

"No one can control the change, it's instinct," Dean argued, turning fully now to face Emma. Clearly, he was having no more fun with this conversion than she was. "The moon comes out, you change. You kill."

"Not if you're born a wolf." Ruby butt in, stepping forward towards where Dean and Emma were stood. Sam was looking at her curiously, almost studying her, seeing just what it was made her different from the rest. "We're different."

"And I'm sure that mark on your shirt is just ketchup." Dean spat back, but Ruby didn't cower or shy away, but stood firm, even uncrossing her arms.

"She's not some heart eating hybrid," Emma said, even lowering her gun slightly. Honestly, if she'd really wanted to shoot Dean, she would have. As it happened, her arms were beginning to tire, and since he showed no real sign of trying to do any damage, Emma really didn't see the point. Besides, Granny's grip was firm and the crossbow was level with the base of Sam's skull and angled up. If Dean did try anything, Emma didn't doubt Granny would pull the trigger. "Ruby here is the real deal."

"You mean –"

"I'm a _wolf._ " Ruby said, her voice strong and even a tiny bit proud as she lifted her chin. Emma didn't miss Granny's little smirk or the way Sam's eyes widened at the woman standing barely three feet away. "I can survive sanely on animal hearts. This," She said, pulling her blouse out so the dark brown stained were clearer to see. "It's deer blood."

"So, you're telling me she's harmless?" Dean said, pointing to Ruby but looking at Emma. It was strange, she thought, how Dean was trying to convince her, looking at her as though he knew her. It was unnerving to say the least. If Emma didn't know better, she'd even say that Dean felt guilty. But for what, Emma had no idea. "If I throw a ball, she'll fetch? If I give a little scratch behind the ear she'll just roll over for a belly rub."

"Dean!" Sam exclaimed, seeming insulted for Ruby and Granny.

"Are you telling me she's never killed someone," Dean said and the room fell silent. Emma had asked the very same thing months ago when she'd found out what they were, and the answer had been the opposite of what Emma had wanted to hear.

"We've all made mistakes, Dean," Emma said, remembering how Ruby had spoken about Peter, her boyfriend from her teenage years, and how she'd torn him apart before she knew just what she was. "I trust her. And I won't hesitate to put you down if you go after her out of nothing but spite." She all but growled, lifting her gun back up for good measure. Dean seemed to consider it for a moment, even looking over his shoulder for some sort of backup, perhaps. Whatever he saw resulted in a muttered ' _son-of-a-bitch'_ under his breath.

"Fine," Dean said, sounding as though the idea of leaving Ruby unattended physically pained him. "But if she loses control and someone dies," He said, stepping closer to Emma despite the gun still very much in her grasp. "That's on you, Princess." He said, poking her in the chest barely hard enough to feel before turning to call over his shoulder. "Come on, Sammy," Sam cast a quick glance at Granny behind him who seemed far from ready to let the crossbow drop before nodding once at Ruby and making his leave, following his undoubtedly still muttering, cursing brother out the way the two of them had come.

"Well," Granny said, slackening the string on her bow to release the arrow, stashing both of them beneath the counter on the ledge that she'd built to hide it in. "I think that went well." Emma laughed at that, dropping the rifle back onto the bar and running her hands over her face. Emma wasn't sure what she'd just gotten herself in for, but something told her she wasn't going to enjoy it.

* * *

 **I know I stole the Jo and Ellen scene for this, but I'm kind of surrogating Emma into Jo's role (But not entirely)**

 **Let me know what you think anyway!**


	6. Chapter 6

**MY updates are getting longer and longer, I know, but I'm working on getting better.**

 **I've also been working on a couple more Supernatural and OUAT crossovers that should be going up soon. Keep an eye out for 'Like a River Runs', 'Work Song' and 'Defending Your Life'**

* * *

I can't believe we're just going to let that flea bag walk," Dean said the following morning, flipping through the files he still had about the highway spirit as he sat at the only table provided in Granny's motel.

"Well, believe it," Sam said, pulling on his flannel jacket and snagging the second motel key off of the table beside Dean. "Without hard proof that it's Ruby, there's not much we can do. Unless you want to take down Emma too," Sam said, having noticed Dean's sudden hesitation when it came to the girl.

"Let's just gank this spirit and leave," Dean said, sounding surprisingly motivated considering how he'd been staring at the exact same police report since Sam had woken up. It would appear that Dean's mind was elsewhere, no doubt on the werewolf they were leaving be.

"I'm going to grab some breakfast, you want anything?" He asked rather unnecessarily, knowing full well Dean could probably eat the entire menu at the diner and then have room for pie.

"Whatever their special is," He replied before lifting his head to smile sarcastically at Sam, "Unless, of course, there's hearts in it."

"Let it go, Dean," Sam said but was out the door before Dean could even think of a witty retort.

"You let it go," He mumbled before returning to his pointless reading.

* * *

Sam was barely within the doorway of the diner, the bell still jingling behind him, before he realised how unwelcome he might be. Sure, he'd not been the one thraetening to kill the wolves, but he was no doubt considered a threat by association alone. He could leave, he guessed, taken the keys for the impala and drive until he found a store or another diner, but he could already feel eyes boring into him and knew he was trapped. Ruby had spotted him straight away, her eyes narrowing at him from where she stood behind the counter, twirling a pen between her fingers.

"Leia!" She called, and it took Sam a moment to remember that was Emma's current cover. "Your hunter's here," Perhaps staying in town hadn't been his best idea. Emma, who had been taking down the order of a small family across the diner dropped what she had been doing, tagging in another young waitress who was busy chewing gum and twirling her hair as she looked Sam up and down - something that made him feel anything but comfortable.

"I thought I told you guys to leave," Emma said, her eyes narrowed behind her glasses. Bobby had got one thing right, Sam thought, looking down at the girl, she was a firecracker. Sam still found it hard to believe that she had lived with the man they considered a second father for two years without them even noticing. The grumpy old drunk hadn't even mentioned her before Dean called. Sam couldn't figure why. "Why are you still here?"

"Dean and I are just dealing with something else," Sam answered honestly, holding his hands up in faux surrender. "I just came by the pick up some food and apologise," This piped not just Emma's, but Ruby's interest too. If Sam was being honest, he was sure Granny was in the kitchen cooking right now with her ears pricked up. "We've been at this a long time, Dean prefers to shoot first and ask questions later,"

"Sounds like someone I know," Ruby said and Sam noticed the quick glance she sent Emma's way beneath her thick, glittering lashes. Emma.

"That was different," Emma said, crossing her arms over her chest as she pointedly didn't look at Ruby. "And I didn't shoot to kill you,"

"You did, you just missed," It was then that Sam noticed the bandage wrapped around the brunette's upper arm. It wasn't bloody, not that the bandage looked that old, either, so Sam could only guess the wound wasn't fresh, but was probably still best kept from prying eyes, especially in such a public establishment.

"Wait," Sam said, gesturing to Ruby as he looked at Emma. "You shot her?" Sam was trying to keep the amusement from his voice, but the irony of the situation was becoming a little too pressing for him to manage internally. Emma, to her credit, even had the decency to look ashamed.

"I may have made the same assumption as your brother when I got here." She said, her eyes fighting to look anywhere but at Sam. No doubt because she knew the affronted look she'd receive. She had, after all, been the one to hold Dean at gunpoint in case he did Ruby any harm. "But I listened to reason," She added on the end. Ruby rolled her eyes at that before turning back to the customer sat at the bar who had been trying to catch her attention, clearly oblivious to the conversation before him. "I guess you're not the only one who's sorry."

"Are you apologising to me?" Sam asked with a little smile, something that he suspected made Emma want to slap him. He was grateful that she didn't.

"So, what's this other case?" Emma flipped quickly, any possibility of a proper apology gone as she gestured to the bar stools in front of them, the two furthest from the rest of the diner's patrons, Sam realised. Emma took the one on the end, the one closest to the door, Sam also noted, but didn't mention.

"Yeah, vengeful spirit," He said, taking the first stool he came to, making sure no one was close enough to hear them as he settled beside her.

"The one on the highway?" She asked, already knowing what the answer would be. If there had been another spirit causing problems in these woods, she'd have known the moment she got here. "You're a month late."

"What do you mean?" Sam asked, eyebrows furrowed. If Emma truly was a hunter and knew about this spirit, why was it still out there and not salted and burned?

"She's only on the road twice a year," Emma said, "The anniversary of her death, and her child's birthday."

"Why the birthday?" Sam asked, but Emma just shrugged.

"No idea," She shrugged, "Probably something to do with her child being taken so young." It was a weak reason, Sam knew, but spirits always had something that tethered them, perhaps Emma had some sort of point – weak or not.

"So, the child died the night she did?" He asked and Emma could already feel him stepping on her toes. Regina had been the case she had come back for, she wasn't going to let the Winchester's take it from her.

"Maybe," Emma said loosely, shrugging her shoulders for good measure. "Or maybe she just misses her child," She lied. It seemed that Sam bought her ignorance, because he didn't ask her to elaborate anymore. Regina's ghost was Emma's to take, her closure. It was going to stay that way.

"Is that why you're here?" He asked instead, making Emma start slightly, not having expected Sam to be interested in her.

"Come for the spirit, stay for the werewolves," She said jokingly, but there was little humour to it as she sighed. "I was barely here a week before I noticed people winding up dead in the woods. Naturally, I thought Ruby at first but –"

"She's something else," Sam finished and Emma nodded her agreement.

"I've gotta ask," Emma said after their brief silence and Sam nodded for her to continue. She'd been right, this was definitely the more reasonable brother. "I called John here. Why did he send you two?"

"He didn't" Sam said with the kind of scoffing laugh that meant he didn't find it funny, but perhaps sad, or maybe just awkward to talk about. It was strange, she thought, watching as Sam folded his hands together atop the bar, not looking at her as he sighed. Clearly she'd struck some kind of nerve but didn't feel like removing her probing finger just yet. "He died."

"Oh," Emma said because, honestly, what else was there to say. She'd not known the man, she could hardly grieve for his death and being a hunter it was amazing John Winchester had lived as long as he had. But what Emma couldn't put into words was her disappointment to hearing news. John had been her pot of gold at the end of the blood soaked rainbow she'd been following. Finding John had been what all of this hunting business had been striving towards. He was the only connection she had to what happened that night with her parents aside from a single recurring dream that Emma saw little truth in. And just like that, it was gone, dead and burned no doubt. "I'm sorry to hear that," She said, not even lying as the prospect of her years searching amounted to nothing before her. "When?"

"Over a month now," Sam said and Emma could kick herself for that. If she'd just had the courage to pick up the phone one month earlier and make that call, all of her questions could have been answered. "Why did you want to meet him, if you don't mind my asking?"

"When I was a baby, my parents were killed on that highway," Emma said, not seeing all that much point in lying about it, not when there were enough newspaper articles out there about the baby left by the side of the road. If they wanted to, she didn't doubt Sam and Dean could dig deep enough to uncover her as that baby. She'd manged to, after all. "It was John who found me and took me to a foster home in Portland. I guess I just wanted some answers."

"The spirit," Sam said and Emma knew immediately where he was headed. "That's who killed your parents."

"And left me bloody in a ditch," She added, laughing grimly to herself as she ran her hands over her tied back hair. "I thought I'd meet John and he could tell me why he left me there,"

"The ditch?" Sam asked, confused for a moment.

"The foster home." Emma said, her voice grave as she remembered her lonely childhood as the lost little girl, crying herself to sleep because she wanted her parents so bad. "I didn't even know my real last name until I read their police reports and death certificates."

"You wanted a family," Sam said, recognising the look of longing on the blonde's face. He'd seen it himself in the mirror when he was at school, watching as boys and girls ran to the playground, parents watching them from benches or buying them ice creams. Mean while, Sam was being ushered back towards the motel he and Dean had been left in by their father, a dinner of cereal or tinned beans waiting for them as they sat together, waiting for their father to come back.

"Doesn't every orphan."

* * *

Sam left not long after that, Emma having needed to get back to work, but not before she handed him a paper bag no doubt filled with food he'd not even ordered yet. 'consider it my apology', she'd said with a small little smile before promptly telling him to get out. Whether she meant the diner or Maine, Sam didn't know, but he also didn't stick around long enough to ask.

He was, however, glad to see that when he opened the motel room door, that Dean was no longer staring at the same police report of the highway's victims. What he was a little less glad about was that Dean had taken to lying face down on his bed in something akin to defeat.

"You'd better have food," Dean said, voice muffled by the pillow obstructing his face. "You know what I got on our highway spirit? Nothing." He said, pushing himself to sitting, his legs swinging off of the side of the bed as Sam set the bag on the table.

"I have something," Sam said, watching as Dean half dove into the bag. "Have you got dad's journal?" Dean, too engrossed with rummaging through whatever Emma had wrapped up in the bag, just pointed to his bedside table where the journal sat. Sam swiped it, flicking through to one of the earliest pages, back dated from when he was still a baby. "September 7th 1984, Lost the Nolan's in Maine," He read simply. From what he now knew from Emma, the Nolan's were her parents.

"So?" Dean asked, already halfway through his breakfast burger and speaking around it, rather than waiting until his mouth was empty.

"That waitress, Emma, she was the Nolan's daughter," Sam said, expected some kind of reaction from Dean, some interested perhaps. Instead, he looked un-phased, almost as though - "You knew, didn't you?" He accused and Dean just shrugged.

"So?" He repeated.

"So?" Sam scoffed, "Dean, our best chance at this case is the main witness who just happens to be less than fifty feet away,"

"We're not making her a part of this," Dean argued, taking another bite of his burger while Sam looked at him, baffled.

"She's already a part of this, Dean," Sam said, abashed by his bothers sudden reluctance where the waitress was concerned. If he didn't know any better, he'd say that Dean was being protective, the same he had been with Jo when she'd offhandedly mentioned her desire to hunt. "She's chasing down what killed her parents. Aren't we doing the same thing?"

"Just drop it, Sammy," Dean said, raising his voice slightly as he stood up, crushing the paper from his burger and throwing it into the bin first time. Sam opened his mouth to fight back again, but was cut off by the sound of a soft rapping of knuckles against their motel room door. Both brother's froze, looking at both the door, and then each other. "You gonna get that?" Dean finally asked gesturing to the door. Sam was ready to argue again before realising just how petty that would be, and so opened the door himself.

"Emma?" Sam asked, looking at the woman stood on the other side of the door, her waitress uniform gone and replaced by dark jeans and a red leather jacket zipped over a white top. "What are you doing here?"

"I need your help," She said, sounding anything but proud, her arms crossing over her chest. Sam just knew that Dean would either be smirking behind his back, or would be just as confused as he was.

"Our help?" Dean echoed, clearly just as amazed by the turn of events as Sam was.

"I need to find this wolf before more hunters come sniffing around," Emma said, stepping past Sam and into the motel room seeming perfectly at home already. But then again, Sam thought, if you'd never had a home then anything would do. That was something he could relate to, at least. "And whoever it is, they're smart and can turn whenever they want."

"And why should we help you?" Dean asked, but there was no harshness to his words, and it confused Sam to no end. It was one thing not to want the girl involved, but to display something akin to kindness to her, especially when he'd been on the wrong end of her gun not twelve hours ago was something very different indeed.

"Because you guys don't seem ready to pack up anytime soon," Emma said, looking around their room, at the papers strewed over the table tops and the bed, of Dean's guns laid out across his pillow and the open bags of clothes at the end of both of the beds. "And three heads are better than –" she broke off, her eyes narrowing behind her thick rimmed glasses. A strange expression crossed her face, a confused anger that Sam felt was going to lead to nothing but trouble. "- Is that my baby blanket?" She asked, pointing to the small yellowish bundle on the arm chair, hidden mostly by the long scarlet cloak Dean had also acquired. She didn't even wait for either of the boys to answer before crossing the room, snatching the woollen blanket up immediately. "Is this where you got all of your information on me? By brekaing into my car?" She snapped, brandishing the blanket accusingly at Dean. Sam didn't know the details about his brother's previous encounter with the blonde waitress, but he knew it hadn't ended at all well.

"Like you wouldn't do the same?" Dean countered , but Emma held strong, her lips pursing slightly in aggravation. "Besides, it's just a blanket,"

"Then why would you take it?" Emma snapped again, her anger the only emotion Sam could see slipping past the walls behind her eyes. Clearly, the blanket meant something to her, and why Dean felt the need to take it was beyond him.

"Why not," Dean shrugged, but Sam knew a brush off when he saw one, and clearly, so did Emma.

"Cut the crap," She said coldly, her eyes sharpening like daggers. "There was a whole arsenal in that trunk and you took a blanket," she even shook the limp wool for emphasis. "Tell me."

"Because I recognised it," Dean yielded, Emma's brow creasing in confusion. "I saw it twenty years ago beside a car wreck in Maine,"

"You were there," Emma breathed, mentally slapping herself. Dean can't have been very old at the time, five, maybe six years old, but surely he had been old enough to remember a baby by the side of the road. And yet, the idea alone had seemed preposterous, enough so that she didn't even consider it. "When your dad found me,"

"Pulled you out of that ditch myself," He said, remembering how she'd squirmed inside her blood stained blanket, her wide eyes alight with flashes of blue and red while police and paramedics chattered in the road not ten feet away.

"And then you left me in Portland," She replied, her voice far more accusatory, the awe and bewilderment clearly having faded. Sam knew growing up in the system wasn't a pleasant experience, but he couldn't help wondering just why it had been so awful for Emma, why she was so enraged to have been left there.

"It was the right thing to do," Dean said, but Sam could hear the waver in his voice, something that went unnoticed by Emma. "My dad, he did what he felt was best. You were way safer at some foster home than you would have been with us."

"I get that, but he was wrong," She said, her anger having abated slightly, making way for a far less guarded and sympathetic Emma. "Keeping me safe doesn't change the fact that for my entire life, I've been alone," Dean was quiet for a moment then, not looking away from Emma while also managing to not quite look at her, either. It was like he was staring at her ear, or the blank space over her shoulder. Anywhere but her eyes.

"We though it was better you not being a part of this life," Dean said. It was only when Emma scoffed that Dean looked at her properly, seeing the frustration flaring up behind her eyes.

"I was already a part of it," She said, "I was born a part of it. Hunting's in my blood more than it is yours, and you have no right saying otherwise," She was determined, Sam gave her that much. She also looked ready to crack Dean across the face if he told her one more time that leaving her had been for her own good. And as entertaining as that would be, productivity was what they need here, otherwise more people were going to wind up dead. "If I wanted to run from this I would have,"

"Yeah, no kidding," Dean said and Emma's eyes narrowed once more. Clearly, some things had been said between the two that was far from forgiven, another thing Sam made a mental note to ask Dena about later. "So, say we help you," Dean started and Sam knew immediately that it was exactly what they were going to be doing. "Where would you wanna start?" A ghost of a smile passed over Emma's face and it was like watching the sun shine on through the clouds and illuminate the gloom below. But it barely lasted as second before she was back down to business.

"We start with the bodies," She said, reaching a hand into her pocket and pulling out her phone. "We need to know exactly where they were found."

* * *

 **Woo! They're working together. Fun times ahead.**

 **Anyway, let me know what you think and try and guess who the wolf really is.**


	7. Chapter 7

**So this chapter is a little longer to compensate for my lack of updates (Sorry) but if you're having Swanchester withdrawal, feel free to check out my other story New York City Sacrifice, especially if you want some Dean and Henry father-son moments.**

 **Anyway, let me know what you think.**

* * *

The sheriff of the little town of Storybrooke, as it turned out, was an old friend of Emma's. He was an Irish man, not that much older than Dean was but with far superior stubble and much kinder eyes. He also didn't seem to have too much of an issue with allowing Emma to read over the reports of the 'animal attacks', while Sam and Dean were forced to sit in the Impala and wait for her like two kids waiting for their mother to come out of the supermarket. Only instead of hoping for sweets, they were hoping for a death certificate or two, maybe even a missing persons report.

"Seven deaths and two missing person reports," Emma announced proudly, climbing into the back seat of the Impala after half an hour of supposed searching, her arms full of files. "The most recent guy to go missing was Tom Clark, he ran the pharmacy in town and hasn't been seen since last Thursday. Graham said they're looking for a body now." She continued, passing the files between the two front seats for Sam to take while Dean started up the engine again. "The other guy before that was Archibald Hopper, the town's shrink," She said, picking out his missing persons report from her pile of loose paper. "He went to walk his dog Tuesday before last. The dog came home and he didn't,"

"How come he let you take these?" Sam asked, flipping open Archibald's file, the bespectacled red haired man smiling up at him from the photo with his dalmatian by his side. "Without a badge, Sheriff's don't usually let people take their -" He broke off then, looking in the review mirror at Emma, a small smile on his face. "You stole these, didn't you?"

"You have to meet the police somehow," She said with a shrug, returning to the files in her lap. "The last body they found was just before you guys turned up. A woman called Kathryn Griffith. Her body was found in the woods without her heart."

"So, it's definitely a wolf attack?" Sam said, Emma nodding her agreement. "All we have to do is find it," He said, shutting the files, thinking of where a wolf would be hiding. The entire town was surrounded by forest, the ideal place for a wolf to be hiding once it had transformed, but it had to be somewhere when it was still human. And with most of the deaths occurring around the diner, it was hard to pinpoint just where the wolf could have come from. It was unlikely for it to travel all those miles up the road to attack people in the diner, but Sam hadn't seen anywhere else a person could have been living nearby. "Are there any houses near the diner?" He asked and Emma shook her head.

"Not occupied ones," she said, remembering the abandoned cottage settled in the woods, presumably once owned by a farmer or a wood carver or some other reclusive weirdo. "There are cabins, though," She said, the cogs beginning to whir in her own mind. "There's got to be about five of them out there, kind of like holiday homes for people in the town,"

"So, we figure out who's they are and then -" Dean said, looking to Sam. He was still not entirely comfortable working the case with Emma, but short of tying Ruby down until she could prove she wasn't killing people, he wasn't seeing anther option. Emma had been in that diner for weeks picking up little pieces of gossip to try and solve this case, if anyone could help them get it finished, it was her.

"We ask them to let us look around," Sam finished. "Werewolves aren't subtle. They leave traces, claw marks, blood, ripped clothing -"

"Hearts." Emma added and Sam nodded his agreement. "So, if there's a wolf in one of those cabins, we'll know,"

"Exactly,"

"And how are we going to get into these cabins?"

Emma was used to the whole fake ID stunt, she'd played that card enough times herself, but there was something different about doing it here. Whether it was because she was doing it with company or because the people in the cabins tended to know who she was, she wasn't sure.

The plan itself was simple, Sam and Dean would introduce themselves are rangers, flash an ID badge and claim they were checking the cabins for anyway an animal could get in. Meanwhile, Emma would creep round the perimeter of the cabin and check for anything out of the ordinary - blood on the window panes or clothing stuck to trees - anything that suggested a wolf.

They made it through four of the apparent six cabins without any signs what-so-ever. Even the weird old man who frequented the diner seemed to have nothing to hide, and he'd been Emma's go-to suspect. The strangest thing he had to offer was a very disgruntled dog with hair that fell over it's beady little eyes. But there was still something off about him, something wrong. Despite his honest words and toothless smile, Emma just couldn't shake the thought that he might be lying – she just didn't know about what.

The last cabin they reached was one that Emma recognised. It belongs to the town's pawnbroker, Robert Gold. It was the largest of them, the wood well tended to and the immaculate windows reflecting the orange of the setting sun. And despite it's beauty, with it's tended flowerbeds and trimmed little pathway, Emma couldn't shake the foreboding feeling that settled around her shoulders. It was almost as though, despite being directly in the sun's sight, the cabin was shrouded in darkness. It made Emma feel uneasy, that was for sure.

"This is Gold's cabin," She said aloud, the pit in her stomach widening as she watched the empty windows, half expecting to see the cold stare of the old man looking back at her.

"Gold?" Dean echoed with a scoff. "Who's that?"

"Storybrooke's pawnbroker," Emma replied, knowing full well that the sleazy man was far more than just a pawnbroker. "He pretty much owns that place,"

"The cabin?" Sam asked and Emma levelled him with a look.

"The town," She said, piping both of the brothers interest. "If anyone had something worth hiding out here, it's him," Even now she could remember all of the deadbeats sat at Granny's bar, each of them moaning about a deal gone wrong with Mr. Gold, or just quick, snipey comments about how the man was shadier than a beach parasol. Emma would hardly be surprised if he ran an entire sweatshop out of his cabin. "He wont be in," Emma said, checking once over each shoulder before making her way up the patio, peeking through one of the darkened windows at the still interior of the cabin.

"What are you -" Sam began, watching as Emma reached into the pocket of her jacket, pulling out the small, leather bound case she'd kept there for years.

"Just keep watch," She said, pulling out her two most used tools and easing them into the lock.

"Is she picking the – she's picking the lock," Dean said, sounding surprised – or perhaps it was impressed - she couldn't tell. "How exactly do you know how to pick a lock?" Emma threw him a look over her shoulder, still twiddling the tools in her hands tentatively.

"I went to jail for a reason," she said with a slight smile, just as the tumblers clicked into place. "It's all about the tumblers," She said proudly, turning the lock the rest of the way before withdrawing her tools.

"Petty theft," Dean said, pushing the wooden door open with a creak. "Nice." She shot him a glance over her shoulder, something that could just as easily have been translated into a single finger gesture, before standing back up again, brushing the forest dust from her knees.

Gold's cabin, as it happened, was a bust. It wasn't that they didn't find anything incriminating. In fact, it was quite the opposite. But as far as they were concerned, large wads and rolls of cash stashed behind framed photographs and notebooks hidden in locked drawers full of names and dates weren't what they were looking for.

"Any more bright ideas?" Dean asked as they stepped back into the woods, leaving the dark, unnerving cabin as untouched as they could mange while rummaging through Gold's belongings.

"Maybe we missed one?" Sam offered, but Emma was already shaking her head.

"No, they were all marked on that map," She said, remembering how she'd managed to sneak the map of the woods from Graham's office along with the rest of the files. "We're missing something,"

"Maybe it's not a cabin," Sam said, and Emma felt as the cogs began to click and whirr in her mind.

"The mines," Emma said on a breath, remembering the second map of Storybrooke she had 'borrowed' from Graham. The first one, the one they had used to find the cabins, mapped out the top layer of the town, the street names and buildings from the docks to the town line, but the second one was something else entirely. It wasn't labelled, and Emma had never quite been able to line it up to the map of Storybrooke, but she knew there was a grid of mine tunnels that ran under the town from her weeks of research. Most of the entrances were closed off or had already collapsed, but there was one she could remember. There was one in the woods.

Sam and Dean didn't need telling twice. Once Emma had explained the abandoned mines, they were ready to go.

The entrance wasn't as close as Emma had hoped and by the time they'd found it, night had already fallen, leaving them with nothing but flashlight beams.

"Do I need to remind you what happened the last time we wandered into an abandoned mine?" Sam said as they eyed the opening. It wasn't as obvious as Emma had expected, years of being left unused leaving it half hidden beneath the foliage, and the wooden structures that held up the ceiling and fragile walls were years past their best. And here she was, ready to wander in with two men she hardly knew.

"We were chased by a wendigo," Dean said as though it was perfectly normal conversation. Emma was knew to hunting, but she knew the legends of wendigos, and she knew they were far from pleasant.

"Exactly,"

"You can wait out here if you like," Dean added, receiving a half-scolding look from his brother. "Great, then let's go catch ourselves a wolf,"

If the overwhelming stench of damp and rot was anything to g by, Emma was betting they were in the right place.

"So, are we looking for a wolf, or someone who turns into one?" She asked in the darkness, the beam of her flashlight shining up and down the water logged walls. It wasn't sufficient light by any means, the beam barely enough to illuminate where she was stepping, let along the vast tunnel in front of her.

"Depends how pissed off it is," Dean replied from somewhere behind her, his voice bouncing off of the walls in an echo that made his voice implacable.

They lapsed into silence once more after that, nothing but the sound of their own footsteps bouncing off of the walls and a distant echoing drip of water form somewhere deep in the mines. That was, at least, until Emma heard something else, something living and far from at home in the dank underground. She froze, holding her breath as she listened, her torch hand unmoving as she listened.

"You hear that?" Sam asked into the silence, his voice by Emma's left ear. She nodded despite the darkness, her eyes straining against the poor light.

"Someone's crying," Emma answered, swinging her torch beam slightly to the right, followed quickly by both Sam and Dean's. There was a fork in the tunnels ahead of them and the crying was echoing from inside one of them. The only question was which. "You guys take the left," Emma said, already beginning walking. She'd barely made it two steps before she felt a snag at her arm, spinning her around so that she faced the two brothers again.

"You ain't going down there alone," Dean said matter-of-factly, his torch shinning down at her face while Sam's illuminated the tunnel before them, no doubt keeping watch for any monsters lurking in the darkness. Emma hadn't realised just how long they'd been walking until she noticed that the light at the end of the tunnel was not so much a light as it was a firefly, something she needed to squint at to see properly, especially since she'd left her glasses in her car, favouring her contacts if she was going to hunt – less chance of being visually impaired during a fight.

"I'm a big girl," Emma said, yanking her arm free with surprising ease, Dean's grip having been less to hold her still and more to get her attention. "I can handle it, I know what I'm up against,"

"Do you?" Dean asked mockingly "Do you really? Because the way I see it, we've got some jumped-up, pureblood wolf out there with Hulk strength against some girl with a 9mm," He was patronising her and it took most of the willpower Emma had not to point the apprently oh-so-pathetic 9mm in question at his temple. "You're not going alone."

"I don't need a babysitter," Emma snapped, her voice echoing off of the walls enough that she mentally slapped herself. Annoyingly, the crying had stopped, but there were only two places it could be coming from and Emma was determined to go and find the source.

"I'll believe it when I see it," Dean replied, his slightly mocking smile visible in the poor light even now. "Now, I'm gonna head down the left one," He said, nodding his head at the right tunnel. "You and Sammy here," He said, clapping his brother on the shoulder. "Can take the right."

"You're a real piece of work," Emma said, leaving no room to argue before turning on her heel and heading into the tunnel, her flashlight doing very little to guide the way for her. She could hear the brothers talking behind her, but didn't wait for them, following the tunnel as it curved slightly, flashing her light for any signs of alcoves or other breakaway tunnels. She was met by nothing but wooden lined walls.

"Hey, wait up," She heard Sam call over her shoulder, but judging by the volume of his footfalls against the gravelled floor, he wasn't far behind her.

"You're brother's a jerk," She said once she felt Sam beside her, his shoulder nudging hers as his flashlight joined her own.

"Yeah," Sam agreed with a slight chuckle and Emma could just here the 'but' on the end of his sentence. "But he's just trying to do the right thing," There it was.

"So you're saying he's a crappy guy but his hearts in the right place?" Emma scoffed, not taking her eyes off of the tunnel, even when she heard Sam sigh beside her.

"I'm saying he's not doing so well," Sam said honestly and Emma remembered their chat in the diner that morning. Their father had just died, and no matter what kind of life you lead, that had to leave a wound. Wounds like that, though, left unattended for long enough began to fester. Dean didn't strike Emma as the type to stop a cleanse his wounds. "Our dad – he and Dean were close."

"And you weren't?" Emma asked because she could, not thinking about whether or not she should. She had a habit of stepping on peoples toes, always had and undoubtedly always would. She just couldn't find it in her heart to feel all that bad about it.

"We had moments, I guess," Sam said and Emma knew immediately that he rarely spoke about this. No doubt because being on the road meant he had no one to talk to but Dean, and this was hardly a great topic for discussion. "But Dean half worshipped the guy, always had done,"

"Maybe because he remembers what it's like to lose someone," Emma said and felt, rather saw Sam's eyes on her. "He was old enough to remember losing you mom. He and his dad had that,"

"You sound like you're talking from experience,"

"Observation," Emma clarified. Sure, she'd lost things, things that could never be replaced, but not from fate. Anything lost to Emma was because she had made the choice to let them go. That was, all except for Neal, who had chosen to let her go, leaving her to fall with as much grace and eloquence of a balloon released before the end was tied.

"You're perceptive for a self-proclaimed orphan," Sam said and Emma wondered whether he'd meant it as a compliment. It sounded like one at least. "Wait," he said, stopping suddenly, holding out his arm to halt Emma. The crying had resumed, louder now than it had been, and a damn site closer, too. Emma may not have had Ruby's wolf-like instincts, but she knew straight away that she and Sam had chosen the right tunnel

"This way," Emma said, picking up the muffled sounds of sniffles and sobs somewhere in front of them. She didn't even stop to make sure Sam was following before taking off down the tunnel, her boots crunching on the uneven, stone strewn floor. Had she not stumbled slightly from her toe hitting the edge of the track, Emma would have collided straight into the minecart sat in the tunnel in front of them. The rest of the track had to be buried under years worth of fallen rubble and footsteps, but here it was raised and apparently functional enough to hold a cart.

It took Emma a dumbfounded moment to realise that the mine cart was currently occupied. Both Sam's and her own flashlight beam found the occupant at the same time, huddled terrified in the back corner with her bare knees to her chest and tears tracking down her face.

"Hey, it's alright," Sam said, skirting slightly around the side of the cart. The girl, no older than Emma was herself, flinched at the movement, but made no attempt to flee. Besides, even if she did Emma was fairly certain she could catch her and Sam definitely should. "What's your name?" He asked, extending a hand into the cart. The girl took it gratefully, allowing Sam to help her to stand.

"B-Belle," She said, her eyes wide and afraid in the torchlight. Standing as was inside of the minecart, she came just over Sam's height, making a small, frail little thing, her chocolate brown hair filthy and matted with leaves and sticks, her blue dress anything but presentable with rips and tears, bloody and doscoloured at the edges. Emma could only guess how long she'd been down here, alone and afraid in the dark with nothing to even keep her warm – let alone keep her sane.

"We're going to get you out of here," Sam said gently, retracting his hands from her vice like grip in order to grasp her gently beneath her arms and lift her up and out of the mine cart. With the ease he managed it, as though the girl weighed nothing.

"Here," Emma said, stripping off her leather jacket at the sound of the girls shivers, handing it over to her. She accepted with a small nod and a nervous smile of thanks before slipping her arms through the sleeves and zipping it right up to her throat. "Let's go," Emma said, this time to Sam who didn't hsitate to nod his agreement.

"Wait!" Belle shouted, her arm gripping Emma's now bare skin, her unkempt nails digging into the flesh almost painfully. "We can't, he won't let us."

"Who wont?" Emma asked, not retracting the girls grip, but instead holding her wrist as gentle as she could, a comforting gesture that urged the girl to speak.

"The beast," She said with her quivering little voice. Emma and Sam shared a look, followed by a nod. It was here, and it had a prisoner of some sort. Sam's gun was at the ready, his torch flicking across the narrow tunnel to keep watch. Emma had already tucked her gun back into the waistband of her jeans after finding the girl, leaving her more or less unarmed and with a terrified woman clutching onto her.

"Where is it?" Emma asked, her voice dropping low. If the wolf was a local to the town then they would know these tunnels far better than Sam and Dean, and given that they could change at will, there was no doubt that they'd be able to see far better in the dark than Emma could. She didn't want to even chance it hearing where they were. Belle, however, wasn't answering, her eyes darting from side to side as she looked terrified into the darkness of the tunnels.

"It's coming," She all but whimpered, releasing Emma enough to back up against the wall of the mine, her bare, bloody feet snagging on a piece of cart track so she fell the last few inches.

"Emma," Sam said, not looking at her, too busy keep a watchful eye out for the wolf.

"I know," She replied, slipping her hand around her back in search for her gun. "Belle," She said, crossing the small tunnel and handing the young woman her still illuminated flashlight. "Take this, and when I tell you to, I want you to run that way as fast as you can." She said, pointing down the way she and Sam had come. "You shout for a man named Dean, he's in here too. He'll get you out and take you home." The girl nodded frantically, her feeble hands gripping the flashlight as though it was her only defence against the monster.

The air was bristling, Emma could feel it already. Belle hadn't been wrong. The beast was coming, and he really wasn't far. There was a horrible smell wafting through the tight air of the tunnel, a smell like damp earth and decay clinging to the walls. "Belle, go. Now!" And with a quick glance at Sam, she did, running down the tunnel as fast as her weak legs could carry her. Emma didn't take her eyes away from her until the light of her torch was just a pinprick at the end of the tunnel.

"Why did you send her off alone?" Sam asked, turning to face the opposite end of the tunnel where Belle had run. Clearly, he had began to notice as well as Emma that if the wolf was coming from any direction, it wasn't from the exit. She was only grateful that Sam hadn't argued against her plan.

"Because it's going to go after her," Emma said, receiving a side glance from Sam that was anything but approval. "But to do that it has to get past us and then Dean. That girl is getting out of here whether we do or not."

"That's a win," He said, giving Emma small smile that she was sure was meant to be reassuring. Given their current predicament, it was anything but that.

"It's close," Emma said quietly, "But it's not coming out," Belle had to be out of the tunnel by now, or at least back with Dean, and if he had half the sense his brother did, he'd get the poor girl to safety before he came charging into a fight. Then again, Sam had been the one to say that Dean wasn't quite in his right mind as of late.

"Maybe it went the other way," Sam reasoned, turning his flashlight so it ran up the walls, checking for any sign that the wolf had indeed been there. Emma was just trailing the length of a claw mark when she heard a grumble - a deep, guttural growl from the darkness. Judging by the sudden freeze of Sam's flashlight, he'd heard it too.

"Maybe not," Emma said. She'd barely even had the chance to breathe, let alone raise her gun before the creature lunged, knocking her back against the wall with one hard knock, taking the wind right out of her lungs along with it.

"Emma!" Sam exclaimed, but thankfully, he didn't lower his gun or step towards her, instead firing three rounds at the giant humanoid shape intent on tearing them apart, dropping his flashlight in the process. It rolled slightly on the uneven ground, landing so it's beam was pointed back down the tunnel, it's light just bright enough that Emma could see the tears in her vest, and the blood already soaking though the material.

"Son of a-" She began, clenching her teeth tightly through the sharp pain of the ripped flesh against her ribs, something that was far from imporved by her pressing her hand hard against it to try and stop the blood flow. She had known from experience with both Ruby and a previous case in California that werewolves had claws, and that they knew how to use them, but this was something else. The cuts were deep, not so much that she was immediately worried for her life, but enough that she was worried. BLeeding out in a mineshaft was certainly not the way Emma had thought she'd go.

Lycanthropy was exchanged by bite, but there had been rumours, whispers really, of people able to turn with a scratch, so long as it was deep. That was enough to leave her shaking.

"Hey, Emma. You alright?" Sam dropped down beside her, letting his gun sit beside them as he pulled off his shirt, pressing the rough plaid agaisnt where her hand had previously been.

"I'm fine," She answered, hissing slightly when Sam pressed down. She knew pressure on a wound was necessary, but that far from made it bearable. It was right up there with having wounds stitched, which chances were, she would need as well. "Did you get it?"

"I hit it, that's for sure," He said, moving her hands to hold the plaid. "Can you stand?" SHe nodded, but allowed him to help her up none the less. "If it really was after the girl, then Dean will catch it on the way out."

"Best find him before he get's himself killed then," Sam laughed, at least, slipping his arm around Emma's back to help her walk. She'd not noticed how awkwardly she'd fallen until she'd tried to stand again, her leg having twisted slightly beneath her. It wasn't entirely hindering to her mobility, but boy, did it hurt.

They found Dean waiting for them outside of the mine, one body lying facedown in front of him, and another sat shuddering on the large mossy rock beside him.

"What took you so long?" He said, checking the load in his gun the same way somone miht check the rime. It was only has he looked up at the two stumbling their way out of the mine's entrance that the smug smile slipped off of his face, his eyes training instantly to the blood on Emma's shirt. "Holy crap, what happened?" He asked, helping to take the weight off of her other side. After checking Dean was holding her, Sam released Emma's arm, mocving isntead towards Belle sat on the rock, staring down at the still body on the floor not three feet from where she sat with blue eyes full of horror.

"We faced a wolf in the dark with one flashlight," Emma grit her teeth as Dean lowered her surprisingly delicately onto the trunk of a fallen, half hollowed out tree before he began peeling away Sam's no doubt ruined plaid.

"You're gonna need stitching," He said simply, sounding anything but pleased with the predicament. Emma wasn't feeling too hot about it herself. "I told you to look after her," Dean threw over his shoulder, reaching for the knife at his belt to cut away the remnants of Emma's vest from the hem up, stopping half way up her side before he peeled the sodden material away, his face set like stone.

"Honestly, she didn't seem to need it," Sam said, still crouched beside Belle, trying to find out just how she was and where she'd come from. There had been no other missing persons reports, and going by the state of the woman she'd been in that mine for well over seventy-two hours. The sheriff should be combing the woods looking for her. "Where's home?" He asked her as kindly as he could, watching as her eyes scanned the trees, like a deer being chased by a wolf, trembling and afraid of her own shadow should it move too quick.

"I live in a cabin with my father," She said, indicating towards where the boys and Emma had initially approached, the foot prints still visible in the mud. "It's not far."

"I'll take you," Sam offered, pushing himself up fully before extending his hand down. "Come on, it's alright." After some slight hesitation and a frightful look at the man's still body lying in the dust, she accepted, letting Sam lead her off towards the end of the clearing. "I'll be back in a bit,"

"Good, we got a body to bury," Dean answered, barely glancing over his shoulder as his brother left, far too invested with poking and prodding Emma's wounds.

"Who was it?" Emma asked after a tense silence, nodding her head towards the wolves body, his claws still extended and far larger than those of any wolf she'd seen before.

"Oh, er - no idea," Dean said before kicking the corpse, flicking it once in the ribs so it rolled over, it's filthy face turned up towards the sky, dark eyes blank and staring at nothing.

"Gold," Emma said, recognising the man's face even if his body was unrecognisable out of its expensive tailored suits, his face looking somewhat kinder but no less unsettling, even without its signature, smug sneer. "Wait, that girl, she said her father lived in the forest?" Dean was attempting to fix a makeshift bandage of torn cloth around her ribs now, the blood soaked ruins of her ripped vest hanging awkwardly down her side. It wasn't much, but it would do.

"Yeah, what of it?" He asked, making a point of not looking at her face while he spoke.

"Moe, Moe French, his daughter is the town librarian," She said, hearing Dean hum slightly, no doubt because she was babbling without making much sense. "Moe came to the diner a lot, always complaining about Gold skulking around his daughter."

"Wait, you think cute little brunette is the daughter?" Dean asked, tying the bandage off and admiring his handiwork for a moment. "And the wolf was her stalker?" He sounded disbelieving, but Emma figured it was his way of telling her he was in the very least interested in what she had to say.

"But wolves don't take hostages." She thought aloud, already pushing herself – very painfully – to standing. "Not unless they're making a pack," She was already beginning to walk away before, her boots scuffing through the leaves as she fought hard against the pain to pick up her feet, but Dean was a lot faster than she had thought.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Dean said, holding his hands out, keeping Emma somewhat at bay. "Are you saying that our little beauty is actually a beast?"

"If he sired her then she would have no control when she turned, and if he's like Ruby, then the change is more than just lunar." It was a strange feeling, Emma was beginning to find, working with someone. She could feel as the cogs ticked and whirred not only in her own mind, but in Dean's as well, to notice as the gears slotted together and the realisation illuminated in his eyes like two mirrors to her own.

"And whoever sired her would try and keep her out of the way," Dean said, already checking over his shoulder to where she and Sam had already disappeared through the trees.

"Or else draw attention to themselves." Emma added.

"So, who is it killing people. Beauty or the beast?"

"I think we're about to find out,"

* * *

 **I'll apologise now for any typos. I finished editing the document just as my internet cut out and my cahnges were lost. I was far too lazy to go through it again tonight, but I will as soon as I have the time.**

 **Let me know what you think!**


	8. Chapter 8

It didn't take Emma and Dean long to find Sam, already on his way back to the cabins. Alone. They did what they could to explain the situation, filling in the details about about Belle, about who and what she was – or, at least, what they thought she was. There was always a chance that she was fine, and they could hope that Belle was nothing more than a scared librarian dragged kicking and screaming into the dark by a monster wearing the face of a man before being left cold and afraid in the dark. Of course, Emma already knew that in this life that the best case scenario was rarely the one they were left with, and she'd seen enough of both worlds to know that hoping for something rarely helped.

This became clear as they made their way through the last of the forest and into the clearing where Moe's cabin stood, still and ominous in the dying light. Sam had told them how Belle's father had greeted her like she'd only been on vacation for the weekend, not that she'd been missing for – as Belle had informed them – over three months. Meaning, of course, that she'd been missing since before Emma had even stepped foot in Storybrooke.

"Reckon she's still in there?" Emma asked, looking between the faces of the two brothers as they surveyed the cabin, jaws set and guns at the ready. No lights were on, and the door stood ajar just enough that the trio could see inside should they chose to stand close enough.

"One way to find out," Dean was already stepping off towards the cabin as he spoke, his gun and flashlight at the ready. Emma, seeing no real reason not to, went to follow.

"Hold on," Sam said, holding his arm out to halt her. Had her head not felt so fuzzy, she may have even noticed his arm before she crashed into it. As it happened, her head was beginning to feel like an old television, nothing but black and white static prickling inside her brain, and the seemingly endless darkness around the snaking through the woods was doing her disorientated head no favours, meaning Sam's outstretched arm caught her hard in the collarbone. "You're hurt," Dean's attention had clearly been caught as he stood before the cabin's front door, flashlight and gun at the ready, but he made no move to step inside without his brother. "If there is something in there, you're not going to be able to run, let alone fight,"

"I can handle it," Emma said, acting to sidestep the brother, only for Dean's voice to ring out in the darkness.

"Sam's right," He said and Emma fought – she really did – not to roll her eyes. She had come out with the expectation to be working with hunters, not babysitters. "We'll head on in, check it out see what happened when little red riding hood came home," Not in any position to argue, Emma agreed, choosing to plant herself as slowly as she could without aggravating her rib bindings down onto another fallen log, her flashlight and gun trained towards the darkened building.

Even from her current distance, Emma could hear the boys moving through the cabin, could hear murmuring voices and – at one particular moment – a very coherent 'son-of-a-bitch' all but shouted by Dean. And then they emerged, flashlights in hand, Dean running his spare hand across his face in clear frustration.

"Well?" Emma asked, forcing as much strength as she could manage into her singular arm to push herself to standing, holding the bloodied, make-shift bandage with the other. "Was she there?"

"She was," Sam said, sounding just as high-strung as Dean looked. "But she's gone now,"

"After tearing out her father's heart," Dean added, clenching and unclenching his knuckles as though he was ready to put them through a window. Emma anything but doubted he would given the chance.

"So, she's the wolf that's been killing people?"

"So it would seem," Sam said, but Emma could already read there was more to the story, the brothers just weren't giving it up easily.

"But..." Emma could sense it a mile off as the brother's shared a look.

"But if that guy's basement is anything to go by then there' something else going on." Dean finished, checking the bullets in his gun, no doubt to ensure he had enough to take down Belle, who was nothing if not a force to be reckoned with.

"Why, what was in the basement?" Emma asked, already feeling as her head began to fog from standing to long. Her wounds were deep, she knew, and if she didn't get them stitched up soon, followed by a good night of sleep, there was no telling just what would happen.

"Bodies. Three of them. Each with their hearts removed," Sure, Emma had heard her share of crazy while she'd been working, all the way from crazy, vengeful druids to vampires who truly burned in the sun, but nothing quite compared to the lengths a human being would go to protect the one they loved. It was clear to her that Moe was willing to go that extra mile to protect his daughter from the monster she'd become.

"Seems Papa Moe knew exactly what his daughter was and didn't want her getting caught."

"So he's been, what? Kidnapping people and feeding them to the girl?" She didn't want to believe it. Humans were who Emma worked to protect, there was an incredibly grey area on just what happened when it was a human dropping bodies in such a way. Did they leave it to the real police, or take such a thing on themselves. But with Moe dead, they were out of people to blame and a werewolf loose and hungry for hearts.

"At a guess, yeah," Dean said, clicking his gun back into place. "Now we've just got to find her and stop her before anyone else winds up dead."

"Well, Sam dropped her here over an hour ago and if she's transformed she could be anywhere within a ten mine radius by now." Emma reasoned, knowing from experience that any wolf who could change without the hold of the moon was not an easy creature to track down. But Belle was new, barely a few months old. She was clumsy, that was for sure, she'd leave traces, most likely in the form of bloody, heartless corpses

"Looks like we're going to need some professional help." Sam said, already looking to Emma, who knew exactly what Sam was implying.

"You don't mean-" Dean began, but Emma was already one step ahead and cut him off.

"Ruby."

* * *

"Belle?" Ruby asked, standing against the counter in Granny's diner. It was empty, thankfully, Granny having had no qualms hustling the patrons out at the sight of Emma, bloodied and supported by Dean, stumbling into the diner. The old woman had gestured towards the kitchen, Dean following after before lifting Emma up onto one of the steel tables. The woman had then set her glasses atop her nose and gone to work on Emma's wounds, sewing the young woman back together like a true surgeon. Meanwhile, the brothers set to work with convincing Ruby to help. "The sweet little librarian?"

"Not so sweet," Dean said. They'd already explained the situation to Ruby who was still stewing on the idea of Gold being one of her kind, now she was taking in the fact that the 'sweet little librarian' was now roaming the woods with teeth and claws at the ready.

"And you need me to find her?" Ruby crossed her arms across her chest, looking pointedly at Dean who had, not twenty-four hours ago, been pointing a gun at her.

"You can sniff her out, can't you?" Sam asked, drawing Ruby's seething attention away from the older brother and back to him.

"If you've got something that belonged to her, I can try," She reasoned and Dean was on his feet heading into the kitchen turned operating theatre and snatching Emma's jacket from the table.

"She was wearing this," Dean said, dropping the mine dust covered jacket onto the counter before Ruby who picked at it with her claw-like, scarlet nails. "Can you catch a scent?"

"Like I said, I can try," Ruby picked the jacket up from the counter, before lifting it up to her nose, Sam and Dean's eyes following her the entire way. "There's something," She said, "It's not much but - I think I can follow it,"

"Great," No one had noticed as Emma walked back into the room, a fresh vest pulled over her head and a blue leather jacket in her hand. "Let's go,"

"Whoa, maybe you should sit this one out," Dean said, rising to block Emma's path as she moved to step out from behind the counter.

"I'm fine,"

"You don't look fine. And I don't fancy having to carry you around again."He argued, something Emma had already begun to notice he did a lot. Whether this was out of concern, or simply because she'd be an inconvenience, she wasn't sure. She also didn't plan to stick around and find out.

"I've had worse," She levelled, squaring her shoulders and allowing her hand to drop from where it had been holding her side to try and quell the feeling that her guts were about to fall out. The cuts were deep, but there weren't _that_ deep. "This is my case. I'm not being benched."

"Dean," Sam spoke from behind his brother, leaning slightly on teh counter opposite Ruby as he watched the stand off between the other two hunters. "She can help us find the wolf, at least," He reasoned and in hindsight, Emma wasn't sure if she should have thanked Sam for his words or scolded him for the implied intent to bench her later. Watching as Dean sighed aggravatedly in defeat, Emma settled for a smug half smile before her mind was back on track.

"Ruby, lead the way," Emma announced, lifting her arm to gesture the wolf towards the door, an impulse she immediately regretted after the tug it gave to Granny's stitching. If there was one thing Emma was sure of, it was that if she tore her stitches open she'd never hear the end of it, even if she was bleeding out onto the forest floor surrounded by strangers and werewolves.

* * *

Faint or not, the scent Belle had left on Emma's jacket seemed to be just enough for Ruby to follow, leading the three hunters back into the woods, the lanky bare-trunked trees casting eerie, elongated shadows across the forest floor with the setting of the sun.

"You sure you're alright?" Dean asked, dropping back to walk alongside Emma. Affronted, Emma straightened her back, rolling her shoulders once and holding her head high.

"Obviously," She replied, levelling him with a cool glare, hoping beyond hope that he didn't see right through it. The truth was, she was exhausted. Granny's stitches, though holding, throbbed painfully with every step she took, and Emma knew it would only take one too-harsh jolt and they would tear right open. That and she'd not slept easily in weeks. Not since she'd left that voice message for John Winchester. And yet, here was her so-called salvation, this was what she'd been waiting on - her one tie to her parents. These two hunters, both barely older than her and with about as much interest in figuring it out as any other hunter. Perhaps it was time Emma faced the truth; her parents were dead, there was no changing that. All she could do was carry on whatever scraps of a legacy they left behind - she knew their name now, she could take it and be recognised through the downworld the same way Sam and Dean were, with equal parts admiration and fear. Or, she could hang it all up and live her life like a normal person. She'd heard bailbonds wasn't a bad career, not too far from hunting either. But no, she knew that wasn't possible. This wasn't a life you walked away from. With hunting, you either lived long enough to see yourself go mad or died young and fighting. Emma didn't much mind her odds.

"You sure?" Dean asked, but sounded anything but concerned. If anything he sounded mocking, as though he was just bursting to say _'I told you so'._ Frankly, she didn't feel like giving him the satisfaction. "You're out of breath."

"Sorry I don't have wolf stamina," She grumbled, flailing an arm towards where Ruby was walking up a head, her red-streaked hair almost glowing in the dying light, frequently lifting Emma's jacket to her nose before titling her head to sniff the breeze. It was a strange sight, but not one that Emma wasn't used to. In fact, she was certain she'd seen Ruby do far stranger things, namely that one time she turned into a wolf before her, all glowing amber eyes and snarling teeth. Lord help the poor soul who ever broke Ruby's heart, that's all Emma could say.

"Sammy seems to be managing," Dean pointed to where his brother was tailing Ruby, clearly not as comfortable with the werewolf as he made out to be. Emma didn't blame him. Ruby was intimidating enough as it was, all brutish confidence and half-snarl smiles. It was enough to make any man quake - any wise man, at least. Dean seemed unphased by her entirely.

"Sam also has legs like a giraffe," Emma panted slightly before mentally slapping herself. She was better than this, fitter than this. She'd been chasing monsters for years now, a little hike through the woods shouldn't be taking so much out of her. Then again, she shouldn't be on her feet at all. Frankly, it was a blessing that she hadn't passed out already with the way her head was beginning to swim. The body's way of telling her to rest, she thought - to heal. Well, her body was just going to have to suck it up for another hour or so.

Dean open his mouth to reply, no doubt another snarky retort about how she should have stayed at home, but Ruby had stopped ahead, her eyes wide as she stared at the forest around them. Sam had stopped too, Emma and Dean pulling up beside him.

"Ruby?" Emma asked, stepping towards the werewolf hesitantly, one eye looking out for movement in the trees and the other on her friend. "Ruby, what is it?"

"She's here," Ruby said, her voice barely above a whisper. Emma heard the click of twigs and crunch of dead leaves from behind her and knew the boys were arming themselves.

"Do you know where?" Emma asked, reaching behind to the gun tucked into her waistband. Ruby barely had the chance to answer when the snarling sounded from the forest, but not from around them - it came from above.

Before anyone could move, Belle dropped from the sky in a flurry of teeth and claws, landing barely three feet from the brothers, her eyes glowing yellow and her teeth dripping red onto the fallen leaves.

"Stand back!" Ruby announced, pushing her way past the brothers who seemed less than happy with being ordered around. Their shoulders were stiff, guns aimed and ready - every bit the soldiers Emma had been told they were. "Let me talk to her," She thought Dean would protest, maybe even threaten her with a silver bullet. Instead, he just scoffed, his eyes not moving from where Belle stood, her claws silhouetted like knives in the darkness. Emma's own wounds throbbed sharply at the sight. She knew from experience the damage those claws could do to human flesh and it wasn't something she wanted to feel again. "Belle? Belle, can you understand me?" Ruby said, taking another step towards the snarling girl, approaching her like she was a cornered animal. Emma noted that perhaps, at this very moment, she was one. "My name's Ruby. I work at the diner," Ruby was barely an arms-length away now, her hands held up placatingly like she was surrendering to the beastly girl. Even Emma could tell from her distance away that Belle wasn't the one who was listening.

"Ruby," Emma warned, but it was too late. Werewolf reflexes or no, Ruby didn't have the chance to dodge as Belle swung towards her, blade-like claws raking across Ruby's chest as she sent the young woman flying over both of the brother's heads before she landed sprawled out and bleeding into the dirt. It was all the permission Sam and Dean needed to open fire. Belle, to her credit, was fast. Almost too fast - but not quite. Bullet's nicked her, slicing through the skin of her arm, shoulder or legs, earning ferocious snarls as she continued to advance on the group.

They held their ground. Emma knew from the grumbling noises behind her that Ruby was alive, but she didn't have time to nurse her friend's wounds, not when they had a newmade, mostly feral werewolf to contend with. There was nothing of the trembling girl from the mines left, the beast having taken control of the girl's frail body and making it into something else - something strong. It wasn't long before Emma heard the tell-tale click of a gun out of ammo, followed by Sam's cursing voice. No sooner then had he backed away to reload, Belle was atop him, forcing him back into the forest floor, her face a mask of feral rage. Dean called out, re-aiming his gun at the beast's back, but his gun, too, voiced it's emptiness.

Emma had barely reached for the trigger of her own gun before a shadow passed above her. For a moment she though it was a cloud passing over the now visible moon, but the thick, hot smell of wet dog filled her nostrils as she followed it. Ruby, though injured has changed while they fought against Belle. Apparently they made an apt distraction, as Belle's face contorted in something like surprise before she was sent flailing backwards off of Sam's chest, her snarls turning to very pained, very human cries. The wolf-girl and the shadow went sprawling through the forest, the sounds of snapping jaws and raking claws filling the empty woods as Ruby, now a mass of grey fur and snarling growls, fought Belle.

Dean stood dumbstuck for a moment, his eyes wide as he watched the wolf - far larger than any ordinary wolf could ever be - sunk it's teeth deep into the screeching girls side. It lasted for only a moment, and then he snapped back, his jaw setting into it's grim lock before he darted to Sam's side. Despite having been pinned by the werewolf, Sam's injuries were minimal, only four long gashes down either shoulder where she'd held him, his shirt an insalvageable mess of fabric and blood.

"Was that -" Sam asked, accepting Dean's helping hand and coming to stand with him and Emma once more.

"Ruby," Emma breathed out. The brawling pair were deeper in the trees now, their features undecipherable through the twilight lit forest, nothing but the sounds of battle to tell the group where they were.

The fight itself only lasted about two minutes before a sharp, very human scream cut through the air, followed by the disgusting gurgling sound of someone gasping for breath through a mouth full of blood. It reminded Emma of a garbage disposal, the rattling sound of the girl's breath like that of the blades cutting through flesh or food alike. Even Emma cringed from the noise. And then there was nothing; the forest fell silent.

The three stood with bated breath, not knowing where to look in the woods for the survivor the emerge. They didn't have to wait long.

Ruby emerged, her wolf eyes glowing amber, her grey muzzle wet and dripping with blood, her paws padding hard on the earth. The grey beast took two heavy steps towards the group before it's eyes fell closed, it's body crashing ungracefully against the fallen leaves. And then it wasn't a beast at all, but Ruby, her clothes gone with the transformation, her pale sin slick with blood.

Sam was beside her in a second, already pulling his tattered coat from his shoulders and draping it around the nude young woman.

"She's hurt," He called over his shoulder, already scooping Ruby into his arms as though she weighed nothing. As though she hadn't just been a two-hundred pound wolf.

"Get her to Granny," Emma said, gesturing vaguely towards the way they'd come. At least, Emma thought it was the way they'd come. The forest all tended to look the same in the dark, and with night now fully upon them it was hard to know which way was forward and which was back. "We'll get the body." Sam exchanged a quick look with his brother, the kind that most siblings could. The kind that communicated without words. Emma had never had someone look at her like that, but now wasn't the time to remember her loneliness. And then Sam was gone, taking off with something akin to a jog though the dark trees, Ruby's head smacking against his chest despite his attempts to hold her delicately.

"So, when you said she was a wolf," Dean began, watching the space where his brother had disapeared. "You meant-"

"A wolf," Emma finished, her own eyes watching the two forms retreat.

Belle's body was a wreck. It was hard to tell just what it had been that killed her - the gaping bite at her side, the bash she'd clearly taken to the head, or the torn and bloody jugular. Ruby's handiwork was messy, that was for certain, leaving very little of the girl behind. Belle may have been beyond saving, but death-by-Ruby was not a death Emma would wish upon anyone. Dean took two steps towards the girls mangled remains and reaching into the chest pocket of his his coat. Emma could hear the tell-tale click of a gun being loaded before Dean shot the body twice in the chest.

"Just to be sure," He said before disappearing into the woods, no doubt to fetch a shovel while Emma stood waiting beside the body, her hand pressed against her aching stitches looking at the ground where they were soon to be digging a hole; to dig a young woman's grave.

It was taxing work, and Emma's stitches protested harshly against just about any movement, but it didn't take too long before they were patting down the raised earth. Within a few days it would be strewn with leaves, the earth beaten and packed like the rest of the forest floor. No one would even know she was here. An unmarked grave. The thought made Emma's stomach flip, or perhaps it was just that she hadn't eaten since that morning. Either way, she wanted to get as far away from the grave as she could. And if she never saw this forest again, it would be far, far too soon.

* * *

Ruby recovered overnight thanks to Granny's help. Her ribs had been broken in the scuffle - which Granny had set and bound - and the scratches and bites Belle had inflicted had been deep. But nevertheless, she was awake the next morning, Sam's coat around her shoulders and the Winchester brother asleep in the chair by her bed.

Emma had stopped by a couple of times, but she hadn't lingered. There hadn't been much point. Ruby was healing as all wolves did, at a pace far greater than that of humans. Sam, with his torn shoulders, would still have a week or more before he could even take his stitches - also courtesy of Granny - out. Emma too, had a long road of healing ahead of her. Dean, it seemed, had been the least scathed of them all. He also had the most apologising to do.

He started, respectfully, with Granny. Though the old woman looked less than inclined to accept the young man's words, all it took was one compliment about her pie before she was grinning from ear to ear, telling the boys not unkindly to never dampen her doorstep again. The brothers took this in stride. Clearly they were no strangers to being unwelcome. Emma could relate. Next was Ruby. He'd thanked her before anything else, for saving all their asses out there. And then he'd apologised, telling her that perhaps not all monsters were to be feared - that they weren't all bad. It was a strange day indeed.

Especially later that afternoon, when the boys had almost finished packing their bags, and were greeted by a knock at the door. Emma stood there, her hair tied back from her face, a bag at her feet as she said four little words that changed the course of their lives forever:

 _Take me with you._

* * *

 **It's been so long since I updated this.**

 **I have been having some issues recently and I'm still in the process of getting my shit back together. In there news, I've moved to Bristol for university.**

 **Stay tuned and I may even update this story within the century.**


	9. Chapter 9

**Since it's been so long since I updated any of my stories, I figured I'd throw out another chapter now while I'm still in the writing spirit. It's not a long one, but it didn't really feel like the beginning or end of a bigger chapter either, so here it is.**

 **Apologies for any poor spelling or grammar.**

* * *

The road was long. There was truly no other word for it. Though Sam had been open to the idea of Emma joinging their dynamic duo for the foreseeable future, Dean was far more reluctant. Emma wasn't sure why and, frankly, she didn't care. She'd had enough of STorybrooke; enough of teh ghosts lingering, the faces of the locals. As much as she hated to admit it, Emma had laid down roots. False roots, sure, but roots all the same. She was nothing more than a weed growing amungst the roses. And once the locals caught wind of the wayward girl in their midsts, the dindt doubt that she'd been torn out kicking and screaming like the unwanted dandelion she was.

Still, after much persuasion and a couple of idle - thought no _entirely_ empty - threats, Emma joined the brothers on the road. It was peaceful, Emma thought, and invigorating. In Storybrooke, her days had been more or less the same. She'd wake up, shower if she felt like it, dress for work and then stay in the diner until she got up the nerve to find something even resembling a case. And if she was feeling _really_ productive that day, she might even look into the spirit that killed her parents, try and dig up a name and a burial place for the woman in the white dress and put and end to her vendetta once and for all. And then she'd fal asleep in her car ready to embrace the next day as meakly as the last. But with the Winchester's everything changed. She was a bird forced too young into a small, ill-suited cage, but now she was free to soar, to roam, to be who she may have always been destined to be. If not for herself, then for the legacy her parents had left behind with her.

Though they drove out of Maine in near enough silence, Dean not even reaching to turn on the archaic looking cassette player on the dash of his car, it was comfortable. They were heading to Bobby's first, both so that they could check in the grumpy old hunter and so Emma could drop off her car. It was true she wasn't thrilled by the idea, but the condition had been one of Dean's. If she wanted to be with them - to hunt as a unit - then they needed to stick together. That meant one getaway car. They couldn't afford to run two cars anyway, credit card scams or otherwise, and Emma's meagre savings were hardly anything to brag about. Although, she did manage to afford two motel rooms just a few miles outside of Cleveland, Ohio for the night. The Comfort Inn wasn't much in either looks or hospitality, but it was cheap and it didn't ask too many questions when they saw three young adults roll up, pay only in cash and give rather obvious false names. Not that it mattered. The three of them were on the road way before checkout, Emma having woken up early enough to find the nearest diner and gather enough food for the remaining thirteen hours of their journey. That roused Dean out of his sulk, at least, followed by him humming along to the classic rock playing through the car loud enough to rattle Emma's teeth.

After that it was just a matter of driving and topping up in gas where necessary. They reached Sioux Falls just before one o'clock in the morning, much to Bobby's chagrin, but still, he didn't hesitate in hugging both brothers like family, reminding them that there was beer in the fridge and that their beds were exactly how they left them before grumbling something about crawling back to bed. It took him a double take (or perhaps a triple take) before he even realised Emma was there. Though still grumpy, Bobby clearly perked up slightly, embracing Emma who returned the gesture without a thought - something she rarely did - before gesturing her into the living room. He grumbled for one of the brothers - probably Dean going by the muttering that followed - to grab Emma a beer, and then joining her in the living room.

"Where you been, girl?" He asked - though it sounded a far sight more like 'bin' when Bobby spoke - sitting in his familiarly manky seat beside his line of phones while Emma fell back onto the equally familiar couch.

"Maine," Emma replied, blunt as ever. "Hunting the highway ghost," Bobby nodded along in understanding. He knew of that highway. It had killed two of his closest friends, after all.

"Any luck?" He asked again, accepting the beer Sam passed him with a nod. The two brothers sat down then too, Sam on the couch beside Emma, Dean on one of the many old armchairs that sat about the room in various states of decrepitude.

"Got a little side-tracked," Emma said, taking a long gulp of the beer that Dean had passed her before he'd sat down. Bobby raised a wiry eyebrow.

"Werewolves," Sam chimed in. "A couple of them running around the town,"

"And outside of it," Dean murmured, enough that it was overlooked, but not enough for Emma not to hear it. She scowled at him, something he seemed oblivious to. Emma doubted it. He was an older brother, after all. He probably had a lifetime of side-eyes and dirty looks, anything that his annoyed little brother might throw his way in the midst of a tantrum.

"Anyway. They're taken care of." Emma said with a smile. She felt almost as she had years ago when she'd lived with Bobby, always coming home from a local hunt with a bright smile and a hungry ego. She'd wanted to make Bobby proud, and she had done so without a doubt. And yet, she could still remember the shadow that crossed his face when he looked at her, still splattered with blood, or ash, or whatever other body parts had been sprayed over her. But it was always gone after he patted her on the back and offered her a beer. It had taken her at least another year until she realised what that shadow was. Just like the Winchesters, Emma was another orphan thrown into the life of hunting - Bobby had said so himself. She should have been applying for colleges at 18 - not in prison. She should have been making friends and staying out late - not hunting whatever goes bump in the night. And at 22? Well, where should she be? Graduating college, starting a job, meeting the man of her dreams and getting ready to start a family of her own? Hunters or otherwise, that wasn't the life Emma Swan had waiting for her. But, she knew it was what Bobby had wanted, for her - and the Winchester boys - to be normal, snot-nosed kids. The story he'd once told her rung in her mind for a moment, of Bobby taking barely teenage Dean to the park to play catch instead of learning to fire a gun. It was strange to think, looking at Dean now - the soldier set to his shoulders, the grim line of his chin - that he had ever been a child throwing a ball in the park. But then, looking at Emma, could anyone see the little girl huddling beneath her beanie opposite a stranger with a type writer - she doubted it.

"Not that I'm not glad to see you, Emma," Bobby said, turning back towards her. "But what in the hell are you doing here?" He didn't seem disappointed to see her, that much was true, but she couldn't tell if he was all that thrilled by her visit either. She'd left Bobby just over a year ago now and much to her own shame, hadn't even called the poor man. Too busy hunting and avenging her parents, she'd told herself. Bullshit. She simply hadn't called, too worried that she'd set down roots here, that she'd made something of a home for herself with the paranoid old hunter - that she'd given herself something to lose. It was selfish and - looking back – incredibly petty, but Emma hadn't been able to help herself, not then, not even in Storybrooke. Letting people in was a struggle, it always had been, but now things were changing. Here were two brothers who already knew too much about her, and not even because she'd finally decided to trust someone, but because they had figured it out themselves. And yet, the plates hadn't shifted, the world hadn't caught on fire and the sky hadn't fallen. Perhaps - just _perhaps_ being known wasn't such a terrible thing. Perhaps there was a goodness in roots, nutrients even, so long as you had the say in the where to put them. But Emma admitted to none of this. And probably never would. Instead she said:

"It's time for me to get away again. No more running," Bobby smiled at that, or, at least Emma thought he did, his mouth shadowed slightly by the rim of his beer bottle as he held it in front of his mouth, ready for another pull.

"Well, you know you're always welcome," He nodded towards her and Emma felt her own lips tilt up slightly. "But a phone call now and again wouldn't hurt," That smarted, and Emma let it. She deserved it and took the subtle reprimand with pride. Then Bobby smiled, looking at the three young adults in front of him, the three people whose lives he had a hand in shaping. Emma wondered if he could feel it, the strings he had tied, the web he'd spun for them all. Emma wondered if Bobby singer realised just how much he impacted all their lives, no matter how long he'd been in them. To Sam and Dean - from what she'd heard - Bobby was like another father, looking after them and teaching when John had been too busy elsewhere. And to Emma he had been something else, a mentor perhaps, a beloved one. Like Gandalf or Dumbledore - no, not Dumbledore. Dumbledore had ulterior motives. Hagrid. Bobby Singer was Emma Swan's Hagrid, grisly, bearded and rough around the edges, but with a heart that shone like gold. And she wouldn't have it any other way. "Your room's how you left it too."

"You have a room here?" Dean blurted, clearly without having meant to. But his eyes were wide as he looked between Emma and Bobby. "Hey, Bobby, you got any more young hunters lying around you fancy telling us about?" Sam was smiling, so Emma assumed Dean wasn't as pissed as he sounded. Not that she'd blame him. It was like finding out your father had a whole other family that he'd never even thought to tell you about. It was bound to hurt a little bit, even if Emma didn't feel anything close to a pinch from it.

"I don't have to tell you everything," Bobby said, amused. Emma cracked a smile at that before putting her now empty beer bottle on the table.

"I'll see you guys in the morning," She said before leaving, following the familiar hallway to the stairs. Before she began to climb she heard Sam's voice filter through the still slightly opened door.

" _Bobby Singer's Home for Wayward Hunters_ , " He said, clearly grinning by the laughter in his voice.

"Shut up, idgit," Bobby replied before the three men fell into what was no doubt pointless babble. With a grin that made her grateful for brick walls, Emma took the creaking stairs two at a time, swinging slightly around the aged banister at the top and crossing the rickety landing. She passed Bobby's tiny study room, his bedroom and bathroom and the two rooms she'd never been in, assuming them to be spare rooms - or, more likely, Sam and Dean's - before opening the flaking door at the end, behind which sat another set or stairs, narrower than the main staircase and no less creaky. Following them up, Emma found herself in the attic room.

It wasn't much, but then, neither was the rest of Bobby's house, but it was familiar, something that was awfully rare in Emma's life. Despite the peeling wallpaper and the damp patches on the ceiling, the room still looked like it was Emma's. Or perhaps that was simply because Emma was the only one to have ever lived in it. And Bobby hadn't been joking, the room was _exactly_ how she left it over two years ago, not a patch of dust out of place. She knew Bobby's story - how he became a hunter - just as he knew hers. He had inherited this house after his parent's deaths and he had lived in it with his wife. It was a big house - a family house - and yet it had never seen a family, not in the way it should have. This room, Emma thought, having had a good lick of paint and a hell of a lot of DIY would make a beautiful nursery. The ceiling was low in most places, rising to a point in the middle at the same angle as the roof, and there was only one window to Emma's left that faced the front yard, but it was a quaint little space, the perfect size and shape to accommodate a crib, maybe a changing table and a tiny bureau for tiny clothes.

Instead, it had a single bed shoved in the corner beneath the small curtained window, the patchwork covers and mismatched pillows untouched. Beside that was a bedside table with a small lamp, a few notebooks and even some pens. On the right wall stood an old oak wardrobe, one of the legs broken so it leaned forward expectantly, the doors hanging open and the interior bare. Emma had little by way of clothes, and what few she had she had taken with her to Maine. Between the edge of the wardrobe and the bedside table was a desk strewn with maps, all scribbled over in Emma's scruffy hand and the wastepaper basket that was long overdue emptying and was currently giving off a questionable smell. Over a year. Emma couldn't help wondering if Bobby ever came up here on the days she hadn't called, if he'd missed her the way he'd missed Sam and Dean, if he spoke of her like he did them. It was a long shot, she knew, but she wondered if Bobby loved her the way he did them. She doubted it. Emma had barely been in his life for three years when the Winchester's had nearly a lifetime. But still, it was nice to think Emma may have a place to come back to - a place she might.

With that in mind, Emma stripped off her jacket. It was ruined really, the red leather torn and still bloody from the attack with Gold - removing it alone caused no small amount of pain to her fresh stitches - and Emma made a note to find another one, or at least a similar one before she strung it over the back of the wooden captain's chair at her desk. Sitting at the edge of the bed, Emma toed off her boots, kicking them across the floor until they clattered to a stop in front of the wardrobe. Then she crawled as carefully as she could under the covers - sparing only a couple of seconds to grumble when she realised she had to get out again to turn off the lights – before finally allowing herself to relax. It wasn't the comfiest bed she'd ever slept in, but it was also a far sight better than the back seat of her Bug. Plus, it smelt cosy, the same musty smell that seemed to cloak Bobby's entire house reaching even this point, reminding her of dust-bunnies and old books. As Emma had said, it wasn't much, but it was as close as she'd ever come to home. And with that, she let her eyes droop closed, letting the exhaustion and long overdue pain of the last few days wash over her as she slipped lazily into darkness, with no idea just what the world had in store for her now.


End file.
